A state Supreme Court Judge rejected Nassau County’s petition to overturn the Nassau Interim Finance Authority decision to block the county’s plan to pay out residential tax refunds in a decision last week.
Justice Thomas A. Adams ruled that, contrary to the county’s contention, NIFA had the authority to review the county’s plan to pay homeowners’ tax refunds through a third-party finance company and then repay the finance company over a period of seven years.
Adams also upheld NIFA’s rejection of county contracts for bond counsel and lobbyists, ruling that the county did not challenge the decision in time.
Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli said Nassau would seek to reargue the case.
“We’re going to go forward with a reargument because we feel that the court was under a misimpression of some points of the law and some points of the facts,” Ciampoli said. “We really believe that if this thing is played out logically and succinctly in a court room, we will prevail.”
The county’s plan, Ciampoli said, was to have a lender pay out tax refunds to homeowners, with the county then paying back the lender over a period of years with 5.95 percent interest.
Ciampoli argued that the practice should not have counted as borrowing, given that the county is responsible for its tax refund liabilities whether it is paying a lender or homeowners directly.
“The only thing we were insistent with the financier was the taxpayers had to get 100 cents on the dollar,” Ciampoli said. “The arrangement that we’re talking about here is in no way shape or form a borrowing.”
Adams ruled that it was the state Legislature’s intent to grant NIFA authority over proposals like the one made by the county, and that the plan did qualify as borrowing due to the obligation to pay the lender with interest. NIFA was created by the state Legislature in 2000 to stabilize Nassau’s finances, and has the authority to oversee county contracts and borrowings.
Ciampoli said NIFA’s rejection of the plan, which he said would have lowered the interest rate for the county’s tax refund liabilities, showed that the authority was not acting in the best interests of Nassau County.
“I have seen on behalf of certain people at NIFA agendas that are absolutely dead set against the interest of the county,” Ciampoli said. “I think there are certain people on the NIFA board right now who are and have been problematic and are not willing to work with this county executive to move the county forward because they don’t want him to succeed.”
NIFA board members have leveled their own shots at the Mangano administration.
In February NIFA director George Marlin accused county Comptroller George Maragos of using “financial gimmicks” to falsely claim that the county was running a budget surplus.
NIFA did not return a request for comment.
Reach reporter Dan Glaun by e-mail at dglaun@theislandnow.com, by phone at 516.307.1045 x203 or on Twitter @dglaun. Also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/theislandnow.
