Facing declining property tax revenue and increasing payouts of tax refunds, Pittsburgh Public Schools this year sued Allegheny County and its chief executive to try to force an overhaul of the property assessment system, which, it alleges, is unconstitutional.
But attorneys for the county and Executive Sara Innamorato argued Friday the case should be dismissed because the city school district didn’t have standing to bring the suit in the first place.
Both sides appeared before Armstrong County Common Pleas Senior Judge Kenneth Valasek for 90 minutes of argument Friday.
They must file briefs on the issue by Nov. 6, and an order will follow.
Valasek was brought in to hear the case because Allegheny County’s bench recused itself.
The suit, filed in April, seeks to force a countywide property assessment and follows years of plummeting property values in the City of Pittsburgh. There has not been a countywide reassesssment since 2012.
“The county has an obligation to ensure a constitutionally appropriate tax assessment system,” said Megan Turnbull, who argued on behalf of the school district. “No other municipality or district can do that. A taxpayer cannot fix the system.”
As part of the lawsuit, the school district argues it has been harmed by an unconstitutional and inequitable tax assessment scheme.
Over the past few years, the district has been forced, based largely on the decline of large commercial properties Downtown, to pay $22 million in assessment refunds and is facing a financial crisis.
“The system is broken,” Turnbull said. “It is fundamentally wrong.”
As property values continue to plunge — for example, BNY Mellon was reassessed at $60 million a few months ago versus its previous value of $150 million — Turnbull said it’s impossible to know how much revenue the district will collect and how much it will be forced to pay in refunds.
That, she said, results in cutting services.
The judge interjected.
“If you have to increase the taxes to meet the obligation, so be it,” Valasek said. “If the school board would raise the millage to meet estimated expenses, what harm have you suffered financially?”
Virginia Scott, the attorney representing the county at argument, said the city school district cannot identify any actual harm.
To get relief, the district must identify “substantial, direct and immediate harm,” Scott said.
Losing revenue and facing a decline in the commercial tax structure, Scott said, are not enough.
“Those harms are not because of the underlying tax assessment scheme we have,” she said.
Instead, Scott blamed the problems on covid-19 and the shuttering of so many businesses Downtown for so many months.
Even as the world returned to work, many offices remained minimally staffed as employees continued to work from home.
“We all knew in 2020 that would have an effect on property assessments,” Scott said. “This lawsuit is seeking to have Allegheny County do a countywide reassessment when the issue is related to Downtown properties.”
Scott said the district filed its suit as a taxing body, not as a property owner.
Therefore, she said, the district has no standing to sue.
The taxing structure, she continued, is designed and implemented by state law, yet the district’s lawsuit challenges only the county.
“The problems the plaintiff has are with the state’s tax assessment system,” Scott said. “Legislators can change it if they wish.”
The county suggested the school district could appeal the tax assessment of all of the properties within its borders and find relief that way.
But Turnbull called that notion “chaotic” and “deeply expensive.”
And it can’t simply challenge every Downtown, commercial property, she said, because that would be performing what is known as spot assessments, which are illegal.
“It must be at a countywide level,” Turnbull said. “They’re the ones charged to do it, and they have the resources to do it.”
Paula Reed Ward is a TribLive reporter covering federal and Allegheny County courts. She joined the Trib in 2020 after spending nearly 17 years at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where she was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team. She is the author of “Death by Cyanide.” She can be reached at pward@triblive.com.