After more than 50 years, all of Lackawanna County’s more than 102,000 real-estate properties will officially have new assessed values soon.
Hours after a judge quickly rejected a last-minute county effort to delay their implementation for a year, county assessment director Patrick Tobin officially certified the new values, developed during a three-year reassessment process.
The new values for 102,503 properties will go into effect Jan. 1, the first time all property values across the county will change at the same time since 1968. That’s the base year for current values set after the last reassessment.
Gaughan happy at certification
Commissioner Bill Gaughan, who opposed the county’s delay request, said the new values will ensure fair taxation for all property owners. Gaughan cited the 2018 taxpayer lawsuit that forced reassessment.
“That's why a group of taxpayers came forward and said, ‘This system does not work. We pay way more than our fair share, while others do not,’” Gaughan said. “So, it's going to really straighten everything out, straighten our tax system out, and it's going to be fair for everybody, and everybody will pay what they should pay, which is the goal.”
The new values will also signal the county wants to stop living in the past, which prospective new businesses will appreciate, he said.
“It means that we're doing the right thing,” Gaughan said. “Reassessments happen all over the country, sometimes yearly.”
Chermak wanted more time
Commissioner Chris Chermak, who, along with Commissioner Brenda Sacco authorized the delay request, said he wanted another year to issue proper notices of new values and to give taxpayers more to appeal.
“This is not, was not a political decision,” Chermak said. “We have commercial properties that want to do the appeal, but couldn't get appraisals, because we don't have enough appraisers in NEPA. But the big thing was the way people were notified incorrectly and basically illegally. It (notices to taxpayers) should have had their old assessed value and their new assessed value.”
The county also should have sent notices that estimated taxes based on new values just as Schuylkill County did during its reassessment, Chermak said. That would have given a clearer idea of whether they should appeal new values.
“We should have copied how they did it,” Chermak said. “That would settle the dust right there. People see it. They either know they're good, or they know they're not.”
Gaughan has argued sending notices of estimated taxes wasn’t recommended when it’s been so long since a reassessment.
Sacco trashes Gaughan
Efforts to interview Sacco were unsuccessful. In a statement a county spokesman issued on her behalf, Sacco said the notice problems could have been fixed months ago if Gaughan had not filed “a frivolous lawsuit” to prevent her appointment as ex-Commissioner Matt McGlon’s replacement.
“In my humble personal opinion, his personal motives and refusal to act when it mattered stalled our ability to correct this process and placed an unnecessary burden on the taxpayers,” Sacco said. “(The delay request) was not about politics; it was about principle and fairness. Every property owner deserves an assessment that reflects the true value of their property, determined through a transparent process that follows the law.”
Gaughan fires back
Gaughan dismissed the suggestion of personal motives or a lack of transparency. He pointed to the county informal and formal processes for appealing values. Boards of assessment appeals heard appeals on the values of about 4,800 properties between August and October.
“This has been going on for a few years now,” Gaughan said. “There (were) 12 public hearings in every part of the county. It was on the county website. There (were) updates every single week about what was going on. There (were) letters sent to every home. It was covered extensively on the news, in the news media. So, I really don't know what else could have been done to inform people.”
As part of certification, Tobin said he sent each of the county’s 40 municipalities – cities, townships and boroughs – the total assessed values of all properties within their borders on Friday.
What's next
By law, because the values are much higher than the 1968 values, the county, cities, townships and boroughs must set new, lower property tax rates based on the new values by the end of the year. That’s because they can’t use reassessment alone to raise more revenue in the first year new values take effect.
Once the new tax rates are set, property owners will know if their taxes go up, down or stay about the same based solely on the new values. After they set new tax rates, municipalities can still increase them at a separate meeting to produce up to 10 percent more revenue next year.
Except for the Scranton School District, which operates on a calendar year budget, school districts will get their assessed values and set their new rates next year. Most other districts' budget years start July 1.
A long time coming
The certification ends a decades-long push by proponents to update ancient values, an effort repelled by numerous commissioners who opposed reassessment as either too costly or too risky politically. In 2017, county voters rejected authorizing reassessment by an almost 2 to 1 margin
“Certainly, reassessment is a political hot potato,” Gaughan said Friday.
The end of the long push did not come without one final bit of drama. With state law requiring certification of values by Saturday, about 9 a.m. Friday, the county asked county President Judge James Gibbons for the delay.
In a brief outlining the reasons, attorney John Dean argued the county failed to send property owners notices in March and June that included existing and new values as state law requires.
“As a result of the inadequate notice, property owners did not have adequate time to review and adequately appeal their new assessments,” Dean wrote. “For example, one homeowner only received six days notice to review the reassessment and to file an appeal.”
Taxpayers also should have received notices of appeal hearings at least 20 days before scheduled hearings, but “numerous” taxpayers didn’t get that much notice, Dean wrote.
Dean asked the county court to modify a May 26, 2022, order that suspended a lawsuit filed by the taxpayers who sued to force reassessment. That ordered required new values in place by Jan. 1, 2026.
In a one-sentence order filed less than two hours after the county’s request, Gibbons said no, clearing the way for Tobin to certify the new values.
Taxpayer lawyer fought delay
In a letter to Dean dated Wednesday, attorney Marielle Macher, who represented the taxpayers who sued the county in 2018 to force reassessment, said the notice defects didn’t justify a delay. The notices referred to 2025 tax bills, which contained the existing property values “so virtually all property owners already had notice of their 1968 values,” she wrote.
Macher said the new values should go into effect on time so unfair taxation of many lower-valued properties ends.
After Macher and Lackawanna County agreed to a settlement that forced reassessment, the county hired Tyler Technologies of Plano, Texas, to conduct the reassessment for $5.1 million. The work began in July 2022.
Tobin has always defended the way the reassessment was conducted and always planned to certify the new values by Nov. 15. Before this week, the county planned to let him, but the recent addition of Sacco to the Board of Commissioners altered the county’s official thinking.
Sacco, a Democrat, was sworn into the job Oct. 22 and joined Chermak, a Republican, in a new cross-party board majority.
For months, Chermak called for delaying the new values. At her first commissioner meeting, Sacco said she needed to study the issue more, but then joined Chermak this week in asking Dean to go to court to seek the delay.
Gaughan warned that delaying was unnecessary and pointed to a Tyler Technologies evaluation that said the reassessment was highly accurate. Delaying it could cost $2.5 million, Gaughan said, citing a Tyler manager’s estimate.
