BRT says it may lift assessment freeze

Having wrested control of their agency back from Mayor Nutter, members of the Board of Revision of Taxes told City Council on Tuesday that they may lift the property assessment freeze enacted by the mayor late last year.

Board Chairwoman Charlesretta Meade said the board remained committed to the Actual Value Initiative (AVI), a sweeping plan to overhaul the city's real estate assessment system that would generate new and in many cases radically different property values for every parcel in Philadelphia.

"All I can say right now is, I have a strong belief that we can take action sooner as opposed to later," Meade said, referring to the Actual Value Initiative as she testified at a Council budget hearing. "The board's intent is to review this issue."

For the BRT to attempt that transition now, when public trust in the agency is low and there are widespread doubts about the accuracy of its information, would be a "disaster," Nutter said.

"We have an extreme amount of concern about the credibility of the current numbers and process," Nutter said.

But it is not clear what the mayor can do to prevent the BRT from moving ahead. Nutter said the administration had a "variety of options" but he declined to say what they were.

While Nutter and the BRT agree that the city must eventually overhaul the property appraisal system, the mayor plainly does not think the agency's leaders are up to the job.

In December, the Nutter administration proclaimed the property data the BRT planned to use for AVI "garbage."

Administration officials predicted it would take two years to clean up the data and to create an actual value assessment system that property owners could rely on. For the meantime, Nutter called for a moratorium on property reassessments.

But Nutter's authority to make those proclamations evaporated this month when a joint agreement between the mayor and the BRT expired. Called a memorandum of understanding, the document gave the administration control over property assessments. Nutter had expected the BRT to extend the agreement. The agency's board refused to do so.

Though Meade declined to comment after the budget hearing, she hinted at her concerns with the memorandum of understanding in her public testimony before Council on Tuesday.

Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. asked Meade if the property assessment freeze announced by Nutter was still in place.

"The seven board members are charged with setting policy, and it would have to be the board that set it for it to be a legal moratorium," said Meade, who added that the board had not been consulted when the freeze was announced.

When pressed again by Goode to clarify whether the moratorium was in effect, Meade demurred, saying she would have to let her earlier answer stand.

Even if the board were inclined to put the Actual Value Initiative into place immediately, it is not clear it could do so.

While Meade said the agency was reasonably confident in the accuracy of its Actual Value assessments for about 385,000 small residential properties, there are well over 100,000 commercial and larger residential properties that the agency could not yet vouch for.

On May 18, voters are scheduled to approve or reject a charter change that would abolish the BRT and replace it with two new entities within a matter of months.

If that vote takes place - the BRT has challenged it in the state Supreme Court - and the change is approved, Meade and the rest of the BRT directors would be out of work long before any taxes would come due on a new batch of Actual Value Initiative property assessments.

Yet remarkably, the pending vote - and the looming prospect of the BRT's abolition - was not mentioned once during Tuesday's hearing. Indeed, Meade and Council both acted as though the agency was here to stay.

Councilman Bill Green, who introduced the legislation that put the BRT abolition question on the May 18 ballot, repeatedly urged Meade to use the AVI assessments as soon as possible.

"The BRT is in charge. The BRT has not officially declared a moratorium. The BRT is required by state law to uniformly value all properties. And the BRT certainly has 385,000 homes that can be reassessed and sent reappraisal notices now," Green said.

Meade and other BRT members said they wanted to reassess all properties at once, not just the 385,000 residential lots.

Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. used the hearing to inquire after patronage workers at the agency who are being converted into civil-service employees.

Of 54 patronage workers who took a civil-service exam, 44 passed, Meade said, meaning those employees can keep their jobs but will have to give up outside political activities, such as serving as a ward leader or committee person.

Meade said those workers had been "slandered" in the press because they were patronage employees. She did not say how the workers had been unfairly maligned.

Jones likened their plight to low-level employees at Enron, who lost their jobs when the energy giant went bankrupt in 2001.

"The people who wind up paying the heaviest toll are the people who have the least ability to impact public policy," Jones said.