Clifton v. Allegheny County

our Supreme Court's decision in Clifton v. Allegheny County, 600 Pa. 662, 969 A.2d 1197 (2009)demonstrates that the CLR, despite any inherent weaknesses, is an accepted calculation of the common level existing in the district and the standard against which the taxpayer's assessment ratio should be measured for uniformity purposes. Indeed, the Court specifically noted that "the CLR is a useful tool for a taxpayer to demonstrate that his property has been over-assessed, as it allows him to compare the assessed-to-market value ratio of his property to the average ratio throughout the district." Id. at 693, 969 A.2d at 1216. Clifton reaffirms the principle that, where an individual taxpayer has demonstrated a lack of uniformity regarding his assessment, the appropriate remedy is to reduce the assessment to that consistent with the common level in the district. That was not the situation before the Court in Clifton, where consolidated lawsuits challenged a local ordinance, which provided for the use of the 2002 base year property assessment for assessment purposes in 2006 and beyond. The challengers contended that the ordinance violated state assessment laws and the Uniformity Clause. Our Supreme Court held that as applied in Allegheny County, "the statutory base year system of taxation , which approves the prolonged and potentially indefinite use of an outdated base year assessment to establish property tax liability, violates the Uniformity Clause . . . ." 600 Pa. 714, 969 A.2d at 1229. Moreover, as the Court observed, the coefficient of dispersion (COD), one of the accepted statistical indicators of uniformity, measures the "average deviation from the median, mean, or weighted mean ratio of assessed value to fair market value, expressed as a percentage of that figure." Clifton, 600 Pa. at 694, 969 A.2d at 1216. In Clifton, the expert calculated the COD using the CLR as the measuring point. In addition, while application of the CLR on a case-by-case basis was inadequate to remedy the pervasive county-wide lack of uniformity demonstrated in Clifton, the Court implicitly acknowledged that use of the CLR as a remedy is appropriate when an isolated lack of uniformity has been established: "There may well be circumstances where use of the CLR and the individual appeal process adequately serves to address cases of particular inequity, and as case law demonstrates, both taxpayers and municipalities make use of the appeals process." Id. at 712, 969 A.2d at 1227.