A burning question has scorched Allegheny County's government this month.

Why did more than 90 percent of the property owners whose assessments were lowered in appeal hearings last year see their valuations shoot back up this year?

The reasons surely vary, but the county is already taking several steps to address one of them: Communication breakdowns between the appeals board and the assessment office that have allowed incorrect information about properties' characteristics to remain in the computer system.

"I would like to make some dramatic changes," county Chief Assessment Officer Susan Caisse said yesterday in reference to the breakdowns.

Many property owners won appeals last year because they convinced an appeals hearing officer that the county based their assessments on bad information. Maybe the county had the square footage of the house wrong, or the number of bedrooms, or the size of the lot.

In some of those cases, maybe most, the corrected information was entered into the assessment office's massive database.

But in some instances, hearing officers apparently failed to properly document the changed information, or the form with the corrected data never made it from the appeals office Downtown to the assessment office in Point Breeze.

"It is apparent that some data did not get carried forward," County Manager Bob Webb said yesterday. "I can tell you it was not a perfect procedure."

As a result, some of the new assessments issued this year are based on faulty information.

The new assessment for Ross homeowner Elio Gonano illustrates the problem.

Gonano said he showed a hearing officer last year that the county incorrectly included a 400-square-foot porch as part of his home's living area. The appeals board, accordingly, reduced his assessment from $102,000 to $83,000.

His 2002 assessment has shot up to $114,000. And sure enough, the county still lists his finished living area as 1,612 square feet, which includes the porch, he said.

"When a guy wins his appeal, a red flag should go out," Gonano said. "They're not doing that."

To prevent the problem from recurring, and to address other issues, the county last week conducted mandatory training sessions for its 140 or so hearing officers.

"We emphasized that whatever data corrections they make need to be listed on the property review checklist [which goes to the assessment office]," said Kevin McKeegan, chairman of the county Board of Property Assessment, Appeals and Review.

"That was emphasized, emphasized and re-emphasized," he said.

Webb said the public should cut the hearing officers some slack, because many, if not most, had never conducted appeal cases before last year and had never engaged in such record-keeping.

"We all had to gain experience at the same time," Webb said.

Caisse, meanwhile, intends to send assessors Downtown to review every appeal file, which should eliminate the problem of paperwork failing to make it to Point Breeze.

But that doesn't immediately help the approximately 27,000 appellants from 2001 who, like Gonano, won reductions in their valuations only to see them rise again this year.

The county in two weeks will send forms to those property owners, asking them to identify any mistakes in the county's database pertaining to their land and buildings.

If the county finds mistakes, a new assessment for 2002 will be calculated, based on the corrected information.

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