Nassau GOP legislators call for assessor's resignation

Majority Republicans in the Nassau County Legislature called for the resignation of County Assessor David Moog, citing repeated stumbles in his handling of the first countywide reassessment in nearly a decade.

"It is clear that the public has lost confidence in this process. There has been error upon error, there has been misleading and mistake-ridden notices being sent out, missed deadlines, a lack of transparency," Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) said during a news conference Monday morning in Mineola, flanked by members of the Republican caucus.

Republicans control the legislature by an 11-8 margin.

Nicolello called on Moog to resign or for Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat, to remove him from office.

Curran said in a statement that the call is "just an attempt to delay the reassessment process."

She also said "the Majority recognized that the assessment system was broken and unfair for over eight years — half of the County’s taxpayers were subsidizing the other half. And yet, they took zero action to fix it."

Moog, of Sunnyside, was hired last June at an annual salary of $165,000. Curran tasked him with steering Nassau out of its reassessment struggles.

Curran had ordered the reassessment of more than 400,000 properties completed by 2019 as she sought to fix years of inaccurate tax rolls and restore fairness to the property tax system.

Former County Executive Edward Mangano, a Republican, froze tax rolls in 2011. Years of successful taxpayer grievances shifted some of the tax burden onto those who did not challenge their assessments.

Nicolello said Republicans support reassessment but have grown concerned about Curran's handling of the process. The final straw for Republicans was her appointment on Jan. 17 of a budget official to monitor the assessment process, Nicolello said, adding it was to "effectively baby-sit the assessor."

She tapped Ana Sousa, a longtime county auditor and budget director, to lead a new Quality Assurance Unit to oversee procedures at the Department of Assessment, Assessment Review Commission, which approves tax challenges, and Small Claims Assessment Review.

"It's also clear that the County Executive has lost confidence in Mr. Moog," Nicolello said. He said she took "the extraordinary step of appointing a budget person to oversee the department of assessment to assure quality control. That is the assessor's job; he should be assuring quality control in his department."

Curran said in her statement that staffing levels and regulations at the Assessment Department were "were decimated" during the prior administration and, citing antiquated technology, said the system needed modernization. "David Moog is tackling these challenges and working hard to rebuild this department from the ground up."

Curran's statement also noted that Sousa was appointed to "provide guidelines and quality assurance — after almost a decade of a frozen assessment roll. Management audits are a key function of government and Presiding Officer Rich Nicolello knows that."

The reassessment is expected to produce tax increases for 52 percent of homeowners and reductions for 48 percent, according to county data.

The process has been marked by stumbles and adjustments.

In November, the county had to fix 20,000 tax disclosure notices because they included assessments that jumped by more than the state-limited 6 percent cap. Nassau also had to fix 60,000 tax-impact notices published on the county’s website because the county had used preliminary instead of final figures when projecting the effect of reassessment on property tax bills.

In December, hundreds of confused taxpayers flooded the county assessor's office after a robocall intended for 3,500 people was sent in error to 400,000 households. 

Earlier this month, the county said 85,000 values in the assessment roll were lowered from the preliminary new market values published in tax notices mailed to property owners in November.

Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport) said in a statement, "While we have expressed concerns about problems during the reassessment process, this is hypocritical and opportunistic political posturing, designed to distract from eight years of inaction by the Mangano administration that made the tax rolls indefensible and unfair and forced tens of thousands to pay more than their share of taxes."

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.