Nassau Dems implore GOP to OK 'Taxpayer Protection Plan'
Nassau minority Democrats are demanding that majority Republicans stop “playing politics” and ratify county legislation that will spread property tax assessment changes over five years.
State lawmakers in April approved Nassau County Executive Laura Curran’s “Taxpayer Protection Plan” as part of a wide-ranging $175.5 billion budget deal for 2019-20.
But the GOP-controlled Nassau Legislature, which has clashed with Curran over errors in the county’s first reassessment process in nearly a decade, must first authorize the county’s participation in the phase-in.
Democratic Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport) said the measure — which would lessen the immediate impact of any residential tax increases — has languished for more than a month without the GOP scheduling a public hearing or vote.
“The Republican majority here in the Nassau County Legislature have not acted,” Abrahams said at a news conference Wednesday in Mineola. “They have demonstrated that politics is more important than people.”
Curran said passage of the bill is “crucial” for Nassau residents operating on a fixed income.
“It is time for the political games to stop,” Curran said. “I fought for the Taxpayer Protection Plan to help smooth out the tax impact of the reassessment and I secured support from Gov. [Andrew M.] Cuomo, our State Senate and our state Assembly. Now, I am urging our full legislature to complete the final step and enact this vital law locally.”
Republican lawmakers said they plan to approve the five-year phase-in once they are confident the assessments are correct and originated from a fair and accurate process.
“Regrettably, Laura Curran has utilized an assessment roll that is riddled with errors and over-assessments,” said GOP spokesman Chris Boyle. “We need to be 100 percent certain this tax roll is accurate before passing anything.”
Boyle said lawmakers have at least a year to pass the bill in time to send out the August 2020 tax bill.
“There’s no need to rush into anything,” he said. “The Republicans in the legislature are exploring these issues to protect residents from the county executive’s backdoor reassessment tax.”
Abrahams said lawmakers should pass the measure at the upcoming June 24 legislative meeting, providing homeowners with enough time to budget for a potential tax increase.
The phase-in, which would take effect in time for the 2020-21 final assessment roll, would slow increases in property tax assessments.
The Curran administration said that under the reassessment, 95 percent of homeowners will see their market values increase but only 45 percent would see a hike in their property taxes. The other 55 percent of Nassau homeowners, administration officials said, will see a tax reduction under the phase-in.
The estimates are based on county, town, special district and school district taxes for the recently completed 2018-19 tax year and newly assessed home values produced by the county’s Assessment Department and two outside vendors.
New tax impact notices showing the estimated property taxes for the 2020-21 tax year are still being prepared, officials said, and will be available online in the coming days at mynassauproperty.com.
The reassessment has been marked by a series of errors and other issues.
For example, in November the county said it would have to correct 20,000 tax disclosure notices because they included assessments that increased by more than the 6 percent allowed under state law.
Legis. Arnold Drucker (D-Plainview) said the GOP was distorting “administrative bumps in the road” to “distract” from their record during the administration of former County Executive Edward Mangano, a Republican who froze the tax rolls during his eight years in office.
“The Republican majority wants to ignore the elephant in the room,” Drucker said, “which is the fact that they were complicit in the systematic and strategic destruction of our tax assessment system by the Mangano administration by staying silent for eight years.”
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
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