For months there have been complaints and concerns – largely from the region’s senior citizens – over steep assessment increases as Warren County’s first property revaluation since 1989 comes to a close.

Of course, part of the problem is the fact that the county is trying to make up for 36 years’ worth of property assessment changes in one year. The “base year” assessing that is allowed under state law allows local governments to go years – or in our case, decades – in between formal property reassessments until lack of taxing capacity eventually forces their hands.

That’s what happened in Warren County. No one wanted to take the public hit that came with a property reassessment, and the cost was something no one wanted to push for publicly, either.

That’s what makes a court case filed earlier this summer in Commonwealth Court so interesting. The Mon Valley Unemployed Committee, with help from the Community Justice Project, is asking the Commonwealth Court to declare the current state assessment laws unconstitutional while forcing Gov. Josh Shapiro and Attorney General David Sunday to issue an injunction directing Pennsylvania counties to assess properties in accordance with their remaining authority. The aim of the lawsuit is to force more regular reassessments as is done in other states.

Essentially, the lawsuit argues that such large increases in assessment when a government goes decades without a property reassessment are a regressive form of taxation that hits those with lower incomes or who are on fixed incomes. That’s largely the complaint from many Warren County residents who have spoken at recent Warren County Commissioners meetings or who have spoken out in public forums.

We would hope that local governments would learn from situations like the one Warren County is dealing with this year, where outspoken county residents fear losing their homes because the county took 36 years to reassess properties. The sticker shock would have been much less had reassessments been done on a more regular basis.

The lack of local will in dozens of counties throughout the commonwealth to regularly reassess property puts the onus on state government to rewrite Pennsylvania’s property assessment laws so that such situations don’t happen so regularly. The Community Justice Project makes good points in its legal filing. We can’t pretend to know how the Commonwealth Court will rule – but the state should take action even if the court doesn’t force the legislature’s hand.