As if more proof was needed, a recent Newsday story provided further evidence of why assessment increases should not have been phased in over five years following the first countywide reassessment in five years.
The Newsday report found that more than 1,100 Nassau County residents who own new homes or houses that had major renovations are now receiving shockingly high property tax bills.
For example, Patrick Silberstein, 75, and his wife, Lynda, who had lived in Kings Point for 40 years, moved into a $1.75 million condominium in Roslyn Landing in Roslyn Village four years ago with three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms, according to Newsday.
The Silbersteins’ total county tax bill is $54,513 — $43,829 for schools and $10,684 in general taxes – well above older comparably valued homes. The couple said they pay another $9,000 in property taxes to Roslyn Village.
“To the extent that anyone receives an exemption for any purpose, it results in a shift in the tax burden to other property owners who don’t receive that exemption,” Conal Denion, special counsel for Nassau County, said of the five-year phase-in.
In other words, the five-year phase-in requires people moving into new homes like the Silbersteins or fixing up existing homes to subsidize people who have been underpaying their property taxes for the past decade.
This is not exactly a policy that will encourage new home construction or major home improvements in Nassau.
Add these new home buyers and homeowners fixing their homes to the more than 100,000 property owners who have been overpaying their taxes since County Executive Edward Mangano put a halt to countywide reassessments a decade ago.
Another Newsday report found that during Mangano’s eight years in office $2.2 billion was shifted from generally more affluent, older people who challenged their property taxes to those who didn’t – generally younger, less affluent residents and more likely to be members of a minority group.
This is actually not that unusual.
A recent report in Bloomberg News found mounting evidence of systematic unfairness based on race in property tax assessments across the country.
“It’s a textbook example of institutional racism,” Christopher Berry, a professor at the University of Chicago, said in the story.
To her credit, Laura Curran ordered an immediate countywide reassessment after being elected county executive in 2018.
A Newsday analysis of Nassau County’s property reassessment found that the
assessments under the new system are “well within every major professional standard of
accuracy and fairness.”
The analysis was supported by the New York State Office of Real Property Tax Services,
which concluded that the reassessment eliminated the inaccurate and widely unfair
disparities among home values
But Curran later agreed to a five-year phase-in when it became clear that more than 50 percent of county property owners would face tax increases if they actually paid their fair share.
This meant that those who were overpaying and underpaying their taxes would continue to do so for five years – just by declining amounts.
Curran explained that the phase-in was the best she could manage in the face of widespread opposition from those who would be paying more, which is to say their fair share.
Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello has said that to make people who are underpaying their taxes pay their fair share immediately would impose such a financial hardship that some homeowners would have to sell their homes.
Nicolello has yet to explain why the previous system and the five-year phase-in was not a financial hardship for those who have been overpaying their taxes for the past 10 years.
He and other Nassau Republican legislators have also routinely sought to gum up and politically exploit Curran’s efforts to reassess all property in the county.
This has included a call to fire the county assessor, the passage of legislation to hold a referendum asking for the assessor position to be made an elective position and harping on assessment errors following the reassessment.
Don’t get us wrong. Assessment errors should be held to a minimum.
But for eight years, the assessment of virtually every property owner in Nassau County was wrong and county Republicans said nothing other than to encourage property owners to challenge their assessments – a right property owners can still exercise.
The Republicans’ lack of opposition to Mangano, a fellow GOP member, can be explained by money and politics.
Tax-appeal law firms earned more than $500 million during Mangano’s administration and donated more than $1 million to GOP campaigns and organizations.
We don’t think it’s any coincidence that the people who have been underpaying their taxes are generally older, wealthier and white – increasingly the profile of Republican voters everywhere.
The county GOP’s desire to maintain this system can be seen in the push to make the county assessor position an elected one – a bad idea already tried by the county and rejected not long ago by Nassau voters.
Think of it. A politicized assessment system supported by tax firms with a vested interest in inaccuracies that punishes the poor and minorities. Just what Nassau County needs.
And Republicans wouldn’t even need to elect a Republican county executive to make it happen. All they would need was a candidate for county assessor who offered enough voters what they wanted to see on their tax bills. Like what we had before Curran.
Curran, for her part, recently froze assessments for the 2022-23 tax to prevent sharp swings in assessments caused by surging home sales during the coronavirus. This pushes fairness in county taxes further off.
The real problem with eliminating the five-year phase-in is the number of residents who don’t want to pay for what they are spending for schools, the county and special districts. At least if they can’t find someone else to shoulder more of the burden.
A fairer solution would be to eliminate the phase-in and either increase revenues some other way or cut expenses.
Property owners could actually cut expenses themselves by voting against school budgets, which account for about two-thirds of property taxes. But that will happen when, as they say, pigs fly.
So, fair or not, it’s up to the county government to find a solution.
This year the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the state agency that has been overseeing the county’s finances since 2000, provided Nassau with more than $400 million in financial relief by restructuring county debt. The COVID relief bill could inject more money this year.
But those are one-time fixes.
According to NIFA trustees, the county would be better served by developing a plan to raise revenues and cut expenses – something officials have resisted doing for the past 20 years.
A group of government experts said the same thing in October at a town hall hosted by
Blank Slate Media.
The panelists said they have offered many suggestions to increase revenues and cut expenses that have been ignored by officials on both sides of the political aisle.
Another change that would make the tax system fairer if not less expensive is to shift part of the tax burden to a county income tax.
Even when 100 percent accurate, property taxes are unfair because they don’t take into account a person’s ability to pay. An income tax does.
So there are ways to avoid having people who buy new homes or fix up existing ones subsidize the taxes of those who have been underpaying their taxes for the past decade.
The question is whether there is the will.
