COLUMBIA -- The chairman of the Greenville County Council says he favors implementing property reassessment this year, despite a law passed on the last day of the legislative session that would delay the use of reassessment until 2007.

If the County Council votes to implement reassessment this year, the county's property owners would miss the protection lawmakers approved last month and sent to voters that would cap reassessment increases to 15 percent over five years. If approved by voters in November, the cap would begin next year.

Chairman Butch Kirven, who last year voted against delaying reassessment, said there are a number of reasons not to delay any longer, including potential damage to the county's credit rating. He said staff has recommended the council implement it this year.

"What people don't seem to realize is that reassessment is a way to give fairness and equity under the system so that everybody pays their fair share," he said. "It is not a way to increase taxes, although sometimes that happens. Sometimes taxes go down."

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The state-mandated system of updating property values occurs every five years to reflect relative gains on the market. Greenville County's property owners last went through reassessment in 2001.

Kirven said waiting until next year, even with the cap, "it's not as equitable for all the citizens across the board" because there would be "such an inconsistency of numbers" due to the old values.

Reassessment in Greenville County has already been delayed once. The County Council in 2005 voted to delay reassessment after council members said they wanted to give lawmakers time to overhaul the property tax system.

Lawmakers adopted reassessment and property tax reforms this year.

Sen. David Thomas, a Greenville County Republican, attempted to delay use of reassessment another year to coincide with the new reforms.

His first legislation, which dealt only with Greenville County, drew a lawsuit, a veto and the scrutiny of the South Carolina Supreme Court. So he introduced legislation to apply to any county, delaying use of reassessment for a year unless that county's council acts to implement it. The legislation passed on the last day of the session.

Debbie Adkins, director of the county's real property services, said if the council implements reassessment this year, then her staff will use the same values prepared last year, when officials estimated the average value increase would be 25 percent. That's not as large an increase as the previous reassessement done in 2001. Values then increased an average of 45 percent because a reassessment hadn't been done in eight years.

"I think there are some good reasons for why we need to do that," Kirven said of implementing reassessment this year. "It will pay off for us down the road. We would be in a worse position and our citizens worst served if we did nothing."

He said the county has a large payroll and its income cannot stagnate.

"You can't ever have a situation where you don't have any revenue growth," he said. "A business can't exist that way and a household can't exist."

Kirven said property owners should not fear reassessment.

"Some people's tax bills are going to go up either way," he said. "If their property values go up 15 or 20 percent, they immediately assume that's how much their taxes are going to go up and that's a false assumption."

With or without reassessment this year, the county would still collect about the same amount of taxes, Kirven said. That's because the tax rate is adjusted when values increase so the bottom line is about the same.

The next meeting at which the issue could be raised would be July 18, he said. But he's not sure if it will be brought up then.

"If it could be articulated as a really good public policy choice, I think it has a good chance of passing," he said. "We haven't yet started to make that case."