When you are swimming upstream, it is best to get an early start, and Joe Rockey, the Republican nominee for Allegheny County executive, has run the first television ad in his race against Democrat Sara Innamorato. Innamorato is favored to win in the heavily Democratic county, but Rockey is defining himself and the issues early, before Labor Day, the unofficial start of the political season.

The stakes are high in the race to become what is the third most powerful Pennsylvania public official, after the governor and the mayor of Philadelphia. Allegheny County is a billion-dollar-a-year operation with over 6,000 employees. For its 1.2 million residents, it touches all aspects of life, including human services, roads and bridges, police, parks, elections, economic development, transportation, the jail and the courts.

In Rockey’s 30-second spot, he promises to take “a sensible middle road, because extremism doesn’t work.” That may well become the general theme of his campaign — and the big decision for voters — since Innamorato is a political progressive. It is a public policy and political philosophy fight that is taking place in other cities, too.

Rockey telegraphed his punches in the ad by listing the top three issues he will focus on in his campaign. He promised no “tax hiking reassessments … more jobs and a commonsense plan to fight crime.”

As a campaign issue, property reassessment does not have the clarity of job creation and fighting crime, but it may become an issue in this race. Most people believe their property assessment should reflect the fair market value of their homes, and that is not the case. There is a formula to adjust for the passage of time since the last reassessment in every county — 2012 in Allegheny County — but it makes little sense to the average homeowner.

Innamorato has promised to conduct a countywide reassessment, because she believes the current property assessment system is discriminatory and overtaxes Black neighborhoods. As she told WESA last March, “By us not taking action and coming up with some sort of regular, consistent system, we’re exacerbating inequality.”

That will appeal to her progressive base. The problem with reassessment is taxes go down for some and up for others, and those who have to pay more get angry and stay angry and vote.

And sweeping reassessments are not always reliable winners when it comes to social justice, since they can accelerate gentrification. We know this much: If landlords have to pay more, they will charge more. And when they charge more, the future development of affordable housing will be in peril.

Areas like Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood, where millworkers’ row houses now sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, can expect their reassessment to increase taxes to a level that only the well-to-do could afford. Any hope that older residents could stay in their neighborhood would be further diminished.

There are other models, but neither candidate has yet to propose an alternative system. One obvious solution would be for the Pennsylvania Legislature to enact a uniform tax exemption on a substantial amount of every homeowner’s property value.

In Florida, homeowners get a real estate tax exemption for the first $25,000 of the value of their homes, with additional exemptions available up to a cap. Every homeowner, rich and poor, is treated the same, but it helps those on limited incomes more. And it is fair.

Copyright ©2025— Trib Total Media, LLC (TribLIVE.com)