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Without the benefit of countywide revaluation of property, public budgets will continue to hemorrhage; some homeowners will continue to pay more taxes than similarly situated neighbors; commercial properties winning big tax refunds will continue to shift the tax burden onto residential owners; a hodge-podge of local assessment practices will continue to lead to disparities among individual communities. That's what this Editorial Board said in July 1995, when an effort in Albany to allow Westchester to conduct countywide revaluation - the best strategy for rooting out inequality among payers - was gaining steam. The same counsel is true 13 years later, though doubtless more inequality has crept onto the tax rolls, given that some locales have gone 40-plus years without revaluating property. The occasion for revisiting the matter now is the recent release by the Spano administration of a city and town breakdown of the dollar impact of its 2009, $1.77 billion county budget, which includes a 1.77 percent increase on the tax levy of an "average'' home in each locality. But that countywide "average" doesn't tell Westchester homeowner's much; the county's data show that the average tax bill in the City of Rye will increase by an estimated $197 next year, while in Scarsdale it will decrease by an estimated $180. (A countywide revaluation was started in Rockland in 1988, only to fail after delays, problems with the vendor and final numbers that town officials ultimately deemed flawed. In Putnam County, on the other hand, three towns - Southeast, Patterson and Putnam Valley - conduct annual reassessments, so that their tax rolls are kept up to date.) The new Westchester data - all but inexplicable due to the state's complicated equalization rate - drive home once again the need for lawmakers to muster the political will to seek state legislation allowing Westchester to fairly "reval'' its properties. A bill to do that was approved by the Legislature in 1996 but vetoed by then-Gov. George Pataki. Disappointed advocates charged that corporations, and to a lesser degree condominiums and cooperative apartments, pressured Pataki into the veto because those entities thought the bill treated them unfairly. Since then, only individual communities have ventured into the murk and muck of trying to do revaluation, including Bronxville and Rye. North Salem will soon venture into those same waters, officials announced last week. Taking a pass Addressing such inequality requires hard work and thick political skin; after a reval, public officials get an earful from those who would be obliged to pay more. So the elected officials take the easy way out: they sit on their hands, mindful that with each passing year, more and more of their constituents are either overpaying or underpaying. Meanwhile, the county wages a battle each year to explain to residents in different locales that the real villain is the arcane equalization rate, and failure at different levels of government to perfect a fairer solution. Taxpayers in 19 of Westchester's 25 municipalities will pay more in county taxes when bills go out in the spring, while residents of the six others may actually save a few bucks. Lucky Mount Vernon, Peekskill, Cortlandt, Scarsdale, Ossining and Yorktown property owners will pay less next year. "It's really the luck of the draw,'' Legislator John Nonna, D-Pleasantville, told staff writer Gerald McKinstry. But it shouldn't be. The sour economy continues to take a harsh toll on taxpayers. It is unconscionable that so many should suffer more because of failure to take on a difficult but necessary task. Any band of lawmakers can pick the low-hanging fruit - enacting bicycle helmet laws, cellphone-while-driving bans, prohibitions against cooking with transfats; it takes a special breed of leader to take on something hard, like countywide reval. Are there any comers? If not, why not? Taxpayers deserve an explanation. A Journal News editorial
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