With a ferocity seldom seen, Nassau Republican and Democrat elected officials are working to ensure that the nearly 50 percent of property owners who have been underpaying their property taxes for the past eight years will continue to do so for at least five more years — and perhaps forever.
Republican County legislators kicked things off at a press conference last week with a continued assault on the professionally administered reassessment of county property taxes initiated by Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.
The reassessment, the first in eight years, is supervised by the first certified supervisor in that time span, who is working on a countywide reassessment that would ensure everyone pays their fair share of property taxes.
The Republicans’ latest gambit was to propose a countywide referendum on whether or not to replace the current system using an assessor appointed by the county executive with one who is elected.
This is a bad idea that Nassau County has already tried. It failed and in 2008 Nassau County voters decided to make the position a county appointee.
The call for a referendum stands little chance of becoming a reality since it would require 13 votes in the county Legislature and Republicans only hold 11 seats.
But it does raise the question of exactly who the Republicans think would be a better choice than David Moog, an assessment professional picked by Curran.
In the last race for district attorney, the Republican County Party nominated Kate Murray, the outgoing Town of Hempstead supervisor who had zero experience in criminal law.
Murray, who lost her race to Madeline Singas, has since been a beneficiary of the Nassau Republican Party job placement service and is now running for Hempstead town clerk. Could a bid for county assessor be far off?
And if she won, would anyone be surprised if things returned to their current state where half the county residents are underpaying their taxes and half are overpaying their taxes? We think not.
After all, the Nassau Legislature’s presiding officer, Richard Nicolello, and his fellow Republicans sat by silently during Ed Mangano’s eight years as county executive when property taxes were frozen, an uncertified county assessor oversaw the department and staffing fell to half its required level.
A study by Newsday found that during this time $2.2 billion in taxes were shifted away from wealthier – and older and whiter – property owners who challenged their assessments to generally less affluent, less white, younger property owners who didn’t challenge their assessments.
In pressing for an elected assessor, Nicolello even cited a review highlighting 80 funded vacancies in the Assessment Department. This is gall on a galactic level.
Most, if not all, of the vacancies, occurred during Mangano’s administration when Nicolello and his fellow Republicans did nothing.
In fact, both Republicans and Democrats helped make matters worse by urging taxpayers to challenge their taxes – often with the help of firms specializing in challenges that lined the officials’ campaign coffers.
It is also probably no coincidence that the Republican legislators held their press conference three days after a federal jury convicted their former standard bearer of bribery, honest services wire fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The referendum may be nothing but a ploy, but it did serve to divert attention from the corruption of the Mangano administration that the Republican legislators supported for so long.
Yes, there have been some stumbles in the county reassessment. But after eight years without a certified assessor, no system for reassessing property and no staff to do it there were bound to be some blunders. And the problems can be fixed and the errors corrected.
What the Republicans’ real fear appears to be is that Curran and Moog will get the assessment right.
The Republicans are not alone – at least in the short term.
Curran joined Nicolello and other Republicans legislators in supporting a phasing in of reassessment changes over five years.
As a matter of fairness, this makes no senses. As a matter of politics, it appears to be irresistible.
Elected officials on both sides of the political aisle apparently feel that people who will challenge their assessment to get a tax break are more likely to vote and contribute money to political campaigns than people who don’t challenge their taxes and end up paying more.
Especially, when they now face a steep increase in their property taxes.
Not to be outdone by the Republican County legislators, state Senate Democrats stepped in last week with their own terrible idea that — we hope — has no chance of getting approved.
They announced they had included a tax credit to partly offset the tax hikes triggered by the countywide reassessment and to ensure that no homeowner would pay the full hike for eight years.
There are words for things like this: insane, shameless — we could go on.
Can you imagine an Assembly member from Buffalo or the Bronx leaping at the chance to use his or her constituents’ money to cushion the blow of rich Nassau County residents, who have been underpaying their taxes for the past eight years because of the county’s incompetence, corruption or both in designing an assessment system that helped pay for school systems that spend as much as $35,000 a student?
Neither can we.
And why would the Democratic state senators, Republican legislators and Curran only be concerned about the people who benefited from the county’s dysfunctional assessment system – those who have been underpaying their taxes?
What about the people who have been overpaying their taxes? Why no concern for them? They are the victims of this mess. Why is no one trying to offer compensation to them?
Politics would be the most generous answer we could offer.
