There is an unspoken message in the state House of Representatives' decision to meet as a committee of the whole on Tuesday, a session that stretched past midnight into Wednesday.

That message is that the General Assembly's frustration over the property-tax-reform issue has reached a new plateau. Because of that frustration, coupled with lawmakers' uneasiness over the eventual election fallout from this year's pay-raise fiasco, it seems House members have committed themselves to doing something — nearly anything — to give state taxpayers some kind of purported tax break.

Tuesday's lengthy committee-of-the-whole brainstorming session, the first time such a session has been held in the House since 1933, is indicative of lawmakers' acknowledgment that these are different times — times about which they must be concerned about the taxpayers' mood.

But amid all of what is and will be happening on the tax front, taxpayers must be concerned as well. A reduction of the property tax, significant or otherwise, will not be a panacea. The property-tax revenue will have to be made up from other sources, and the anticipated influx of revenue from slot-machine gambling is unlikely to be enough to cover the scope of whatever reduction is approved. Therefore, some, perhaps a lot, of the lost property-tax revenue will have to be made up from other taxes, such as the state income tax or state sales tax.

Those changes could involve some taxpayers paying more under a revamped system than they gained by the property tax reduction. And, poorer residents of the commonwealth will be more greatly impacted by a sales tax increase than those less financially strapped.

If the sales tax is upped, and if and when another tax-reform plan is approved, the law must stipulate that every penny generated by the increase must go toward the property-tax-reduction pot. None of the increase must be diverted for general state expenditures.

On Tuesday, the House favored two proposals that would cut property taxes by raising the state income tax; either raising the state's 6 percent sales tax or applying it to a broader range of items; plus using gambling revenue. Meanwhile, the state Senate was trying to craft a plan under which the voters — not school boards — would decide by way of a referendum whether to raise local-level earned-income taxes to offset in part any property tax reductions approved.

A "referendum card" did not play out well when school districts were trying to decide whether to participate in last year's flawed Act 72 property-tax-reform plan, but it was the school boards that overwhelmingly nixed the referendum idea, not the taxpayers themselves.

Gov. Ed Rendell called the special tax-reform legislative session in September after the unexpectedly high rejection of Act 72. That lawmakers three months later found themselves in a committee of the whole hearing details about a broad range of suggestions and ideas instead of in actual session formally considering one particular proposal indicates the ongoing divisiveness that still exists on the tax-reform front.

It's safe to say that the property tax won't go away completely, regardless of what plan is or is not eventually approved. Any lawmaker or taxpayer who still clings to that hope is fooling himself or herself.

The important question is whether whatever alternative plan might be approved will be able to produce enough revenue consistently to avoid the necessity of raising the property tax above the new, lower level made possible by tax reform.

That legitimate fear of property-tax hikes after tax reform was one of the objections to Act 72 that was voiced by many people.

Act 72 and its predecessor failed tax-reform plan — the even-more-greatly detested homestead-exemption plan — provided proof of the complexity and side issues associated with changing the current way Pennsylvania residents are taxed. Tuesday's committee of the whole indicates that lawmakers still might be far away from successfully navigating that complexity.