Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham has a message for county commissioners who want to reassess county home values: not so fast!

Cunningham vetoed a measure to get the process moving.

Cunningham says there's one reason why he vetoed the bill to authorize a county-wide real estate reassessment.

"I am vetoing this because it is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time and it will have grave and lasting consequences for our county," he said.

"The data that he brought to the Board of Commissioners worked against his cases. It actually showed the data are now in line with now being a good time as any to go ahead with the reassessment," said Lehigh County Commissioner Scott Ott - Republican.

Last week commissioners passed the vote unanimously to reassess county homes and businesses.

They only need six votes to override the veto.

Cunningham says the reassessment will cause some residents a tax increase of $3,000 once county, local and school taxes are completed.

Commissioners feel that is half the story.

"About twice as many people will see their taxes go down as go up by a substantial margin," said Ott.

Republicans have control of Lehigh County.

Some ran on the platform of having that power just to override an executive veto.

Cunningham says now is not the time for politics.

"My hope is that people put the politics aside," he said. "This is an issue that has serious implications for all 125,000 property owners. This is not a time to play power politics."

"They could override a veto without Vic, and Lisa, and myself at all because everybody else voted to go ahead with this reassessment we had an eight nothing vote," said Ott.

The Lehigh Valley Association of Realtors, who campaigned in favor of reassessment said it was disappointed to hear the news of the veto.