The Pennsylvania Farmland and Forest Land Assessment Act, commonly referred to as the Clean and Green Program, was modified last month to give some tax relief to farmers and landowners.

Clean and Green Act is a voluntary program designed to provide a reduced property tax rate for properties used in production agriculture, forestry or dedicated for open space.

House Bill 806, signed into law by Gov. Tom Wolf , was widely supported by members of the General Assembly.

It specifically prohibits land enrolled in the program from receiving a higher tax assessment than what the normal assessment would be under a county’s fair market value, and prohibits counties from making yearly increases in Clean and Green values in any year the county has not done a county-wide reassessment of all properties.

The bill was also supported by the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau.

“The legislation was needed to correct real life problems. In several counties across the state, landowners in Clean and Green have been assessed a higher tax value than what would be assessed if the property was not enrolled in the program,” said PFB President Rick Ebert. “The change will also eliminate the substantial annual increase in property taxes that has occurred on Clean and Green properties whose counties adjusted values each year.”

Karen Beardsley, chief assessor for Warren County, said, “None of this really applies to us. We’ve kept our Clean and Green (tax assessment) at the levels of our last reassessment, and at lower values per acre than the state average.”

To be eligible for enrollment in the Clean and Green program, land must be devoted to one of the following three qualifying uses: agricultural use, agricultural reserve use, or forest reserve use.

Beardsley said approximately 259,000 acres in Warren County are assessed at the various Clean and Green categories, and most of that falls under forest reserve. About 66,000 acres in the county are agricultural.

The only requirement for both agricultural reserve use and forest reserve use is that the landowner must own at least ten acres. To meet the minimum acreage requirement for any of these uses, the regulations make clear that farmstead and woodlots are to be included and will be taxed at the use value for that particular subcategory.