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Nassau homeowners sue county over reassessment

Jessica Parks
The Nassau County Executive and Legislative Building as seen in Garden City. (Photo by Noah Manskar)

Citing lack of transparency, a rushed process and unfair targeting of former property tax grievers, four Nassau County residents have filed a class action lawsuit to prevent the tentative assessment roll from being finalized.

The lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court last week, alleges that two independent studies on recent residential home sales “revealed considerable discrepancies” between the county’s newly assessed values and the “time adjusted sales price of specific homes in 2018.”

One study found that 69 percent of the homes that sold in 2018 had an assessed value that had a difference of 5 percent or more from the time-adjusted sales price; the other study found 84 percent of homes had a discrepancy of 5 percent or more.

Nassau County Executive Laura Curran called for the reassessment of all homes in the county in 2018 after the county’s assessment roll had been frozen in 2008.

Statistics released by the county executive last week estimate that 55 percent of Nassau County homeowners will see a decrease in their property taxes due to the reassessment, exemptions and a five-year phase-in.

Herrick Feinstein LLP, the firm that filed the lawsuit on behalf of Eric Berliner, Robert Fine, Michael Aryeh and Jill Pesce, alleges that the countywide reassessment was completed in an “unreasonably short period of time.”

“In 2003, the countywide assessment took three years to complete, and in 2018 it took less than 6 months,” the lawsuit states.

During the 2003 assessment, the county used site visits, photographs, sketches, inspection of public records and collection of massive amounts of data for appraisal analysis, and ran a public information campaign, according to the lawsuit.

The 2018 assessment was the first to utilize computer or estimation modeling as the primary basis to calculate residential market values, the lawsuit states.

Plaintiffs allege that the usefulness of computer modeling is determined by the type and amount of data that is entered and how that data is comparatively weighed, and the results of a modeling system “must be examined with careful scrutiny.”

Instead, the lawsuit states that the modeling utilized, and its software, “remain clouded in secrecy” because no information on the software or algorithm was made available to the public.

The New York State Committee on Open Government issued an advisory opinion suggesting that the algorithm be released due to its use in making “important government decisions” and therefore the county should not be permitted to claim trade secret status.

The county has yet to release the modeling software’s formula.

Furthermore, the lawsuit asserts that the results of the assessment target county residents who grieved in the past.

It states that after stories of disparate treatment of homes on the same block were reported, a number of “vocal Sands Point homeowners who complained about egregious over assessments” saw the sudden reduction of their home values “en masse.”

The lawsuit states that Nassau’s assessors improperly used comparative sales when conducting the assessment. At a public hearing with the Department of Assessment, Nassau County Assessor David Moog said the algorithm only provides a prediction of the home value, which is then verified through comparative sales.

Moog said at the hearing that any improperly calculated home values would be caught when comparable home values were reviewed, according to the lawsuit.

However, an independent study of hundreds of homes found that “sales comparatives were not adjusting the modeling’s price up or down,” the suit states.

Plaintiffs allege that the county assessors’ “use of so-called ‘neighborhood factors’” was another means by which the market value could be manipulated.

Nassau County was divided into 324 geographic areas, and the lawsuit says the parameters used to identify the neighborhoods were unknown.

The neighborhood factor was designated as between 0.6 and 1.9 and was then used to either decrease or increase assessed values, according to the lawsuit.

It further states that the neighborhood factor effectively produced striking differences between homes that were across the street from one another, differences that could not be justified.

The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the 2018-19 reassessment was conducted in an unlawful manner, additional time to further review, analyze and revise the tentative assessment roll, further disclosure of modeling and methods, and a permanent injunction and “stay of all efforts to finalize and publish the assessment roll by April 1, 2020.”

Efforts to obtain comment from the county executive were unavailing.

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