Democratic County Executive Candidate Tom Suozzi (Glen Cove) last week laid out his plan to fix Nassau County’s property tax assessment system while continuing his attack on current County Executive Edward Mangano as a “fiscal phony.”
At a news conference outside the Democratic Party’s offices in Carle Place, Suozzi said his administration would reconfigure the frequency with which Nassau County issues its assessments and implement a tax credit system for reimbursing overpaid property taxes to eliminate the backlog of refunds and eliminate the need to bond.
Suozzi also criticized the Mangano administration for freezing assessments at inopportune economic times, awarding “unwarranted and excessively high reductions” to the majority of taxpayers who have filed assessment grievances, and the attempting to eliminate the county guarantee under which the county covered the school district and special district share of tax refunds.
“I want to make it clear that I believe that Ed Mangano is a fiscal phony,” said Suozzi, who held the county executive position from 2002-09 but was unseated by Mangano in his attempt for re-election. “He has raised your taxes dramatically. He has raised the borrowing in Nassau County dramatically. He’s telling people things that are just not accurate.”
Mangano has put forward his own plan for fixing the assessments, which includes the early settling of tax refund claims – a practice Suozzi said shifts the tax burden to homeowners who do not challenge their assessments – and issuing bonds to pay off existing refund liabilities.
Mangano has said that Democrats in the Legislature have obstructed his efforts to fix the system by refusing to authorize borrowing.
Suozzi said he would bring in real estate professionals and property tax assessment experts within the first 30 days of his administration to figure out how often the county should issue assessments.
Suozzi also said he would restore staff cuts made in the County Assessor’s office. Mangano, he said, has cut more than 100 people from the office, resulting in an imbalance in the number of workers responsible for refunding the four types of Nassau County properties – residential, commercial, utility and co-op.
“It’s a completely inequitable system,” Suozzzi said.
Under Suozzi’s proposed tax credit system, a credit would be issued to taxpayers for overpayment of property taxes that would be applied against the following year’s taxes.
In addition, taxpayers would only contribute to their own class’ tax levy. Suozzi said 76 percent of property tax refunds are reimbursed to homeowners, while 85 percent of property tax refunds go to commercial property owners.
“This will have a dramatically positive impact on residential homeowners and create much more equity in the system moving forward,” Suozzi said.
Because of the Mangano administration’s mismanagement of the tax assessment system, Suozzi said, Nassau County school district taxes have increased approximately 19 percent in the last two years.
The county does not set school tax levies – a point emphasized by Mangano, who has blamed school districts for the increases.
But Suozzi maintains that the assessment system has shifted costs to some taxpayers, raising rates far above the increases authorized by districts.
Suozzi said the Mangano administration was attempting to shift $100 million in reimbursements previously covered by the county guarantee onto school districts and other municipalities to eliminate Nassau County’s responsibility for assessment miscalculations by the county.
Suozzi said that on the first day of his administration, he would drop the county’s appeal of a New York State Appellate Division Court’s ruling that found the elimination of the county guarantee unconstitutional.
“This idea that of shifting this expense onto the local school districts and villages and towns and special districts is completely irresponsible,” Suozzi said.
