Nassau's assessment system still needs a fix

Nothing has changed.

Nassau County's continued failure to appropriately address the pervasive problems in its assessment system has once again left some taxpayers in the lurch, facing assessments far higher than they anticipated, with little time to challenge them.

The latest errors were made during the closing days of former County Executive Laura Curran's administration. But while the mistakes themselves are problematic, it shouldn't have taken 16 months for current County Executive Bruce Blakeman and acting Assessor Matthew Cronin to discover them. 

There have been other assessment errors during the Blakeman administration. Last fall, for example, a tax-exempt New Hyde Park parish was wrongly assessed at a value of $16.7 million, resulting in a $676,634 tax bill. That likely will affect homeowners in the school district, whose taxes will probably rise to make up for the mistake.

There's no simple fix to any of this. Curran's effort to revalue properties after an eight-year freeze was still the right move and the resulting roll was mostly accurate, even with the errors Blakeman's administration has now found. But despite his finger-pointing at Curran, Blakeman has done little since the start of his term to act on his campaign promises to tackle assessment head-on.

Despite the complexities in Nassau's assessment mess, there are some immediate steps to take. Blakeman still hasn't hired a permanent, qualified assessor to lead the office. Finding one should have been a top priority from the beginning — and he should do it now. And it's clear that the assessment office still lacks the appropriate staff and updated software and technology needed to run a top-notch system. Adding the right leadership and staff, and upgrading the system's software, certainly would help.

Beyond that, Blakeman really should continue what Curran began: Restart regular assessments and move toward getting them right, rather than cast blame at those no longer in charge. The freeze he has perpetuated only makes values less accurate, forces homeowners to grieve, and continues the march back toward inaccurate rolls.

Blakeman could make a bad system better. But repairing the underlying cracks in Nassau's assessment foundation requires massive reform on the state level that would end the outsized power of the tax-appeal industry, stop the "county guarantee" that requires Nassau to take responsibility for overpayments to schools, towns and villages, and move the assessment task to the towns, as is done in Suffolk County and elsewhere. 

Sadly, there still seems to be little appetite for any of those big moves, so Nassau taxpayers are stuck fighting for the small ones. The onus is on Blakeman. He has promised to make assessment a priority. We're still waiting.