Nutter appoints new BRT director
Thursday, October 8th, 2009
By: Susan Phillips
sphillips@whyy.org
The city agency that determines Philadelphia's property tax assessments will now be under control of the Finance Department. The Board of Revision of Taxes has come under scrutiny after newspaper articles revealed an organization hindered by corruption, patronage and faulty assessments.
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Mayor Michael Nutter and the BRT board have agreed to appoint the city's finance director, Rob Dubow, as interim director.
The previous director resigned in September. Nutter says the move is an important step toward restoring public confidence in the agency.
Nutter: Someone needs to be in charge, they don't have an executive director and their chief assessment officer unfortunately has been very ill. So I've asked one of the highest ranking members of the administration who is a good manager and knows how to get things done.
Nutter says the board will continue to hear appeals.
Board member Russell Nigro says he's happy the assessment and appeals process are now separate.
Nigro: I'm perfectly content to be away from the assessment process and do what the board of judges asked me to do which is to handle the appeals.
Legislation is expected to be introduced in City Council today that would permanently split the assessment and appeals functions.