BEAVER — Another step in the court fight over a county-wide reassessment is complete.
Beaver County filed a brief Monday outlining the grounds for its appeal of a December ruling by the Commonwealth Court, which ordered the county to perform a property reassessment.
Now the plaintiffs in the case, Beaver County developer Chuck Betters and his related businesses, have until June 7 to file a response before the court rules how the case will proceed, according to county Solicitor Garen Fedeles.
Largely a procedural matter, the 18-page brief reiterates the county’s argument that Betters’ attorney, John Havey, didn’t lay the required foundation for expert testimony presented during a Nov. 20 trial before county Judges John McBride and Dale Fouse.
“The facts upon which (the expert witness) relied in reaching his opinion was not articulated in direct examination nor made part of the record as required,” Fedeles wrote in the brief.
The county objected to the testimony on those same grounds during the trial, but the objection was overruled.
Fedeles also argued that, in presenting the case, Havey neglected to introduce any evidence that the county’s current assessments have harmed Betters or his companies.
“The record is devoid of any specific example of a particular piece of property owned by any of the appellees that is being taxes at a rate that violates the uniformity clause,” Fedeles wrote in the brief.
According to Havey, the suit was brought in 2016 to correct inequities in Beaver County’s property assessments that exist because the county’s last assessment went into effect in 1982.
During the trial, Havey convinced the court of those inequities with witnesses who are experts in property assessments. Their testimony relied upon information gathered and reports written by others who did not testify at the trial.
The court ruled the county’s 1982 base-year method of property evaluation violated the state constitution and the Consolidated County Assessment Law “in that is does not reflect, uniformly and accurately, the proper assessed values of the 96,000 parcels in Beaver County.”
It’s also resulted in a “mass misassessment of properties in Beaver County,” according to Fouse and McBride.
The county’s appeal of the ruling has at least delayed when and if a reassessment will begin. The initial order included a mandate to have a firm in place to do the reassessment by June and to have the reassessment completed by 2020.
The county commissioners have been united in voting to appeal the ruling, but Commissioners Sandie Egley and Tony Amadio haven’t commented because it involved a matter of litigation.
“I continue to believe that a reassessment is not in the best interest of the taxpayers that I represent,” Camp said in a written statement issued after the decision was made to appeal the ruling. “I have done, and will continue to do, everything in my power to oppose it.”