Letter to the editor: 'Recipe' to fix property tax assessment issues

Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald’s staffers finally appeared publicly to discuss the seven-year ratio coding scandal. After fixing one of the seven years of bad luck for taxpayers, Fitzgerald’s chief of staff, Jennifer Liptak, was asked about conducting a voluntary review of the other six years so taxpayers would finally be paying their fair share of taxes. Would she fix the problem now or wait for a judge to order an honest review? She told county council members that she would have to know what the scope of work would be to fix the faulty assessor work product.

Here’s the answer: Follow state assessment law. The recipe is in the simple language: Separate the good property transfers from the bad ones … without bias.

I plan to send copies of this letter to Fitzgerald and Liptak, since they are the oversight for the county assessment office. I’ll even include the “recipe.”

Mike Suley

Scott Township

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The writer is a consultant for the plaintiffs in the common level ratio lawsuit.