Gov. Andrew Cuomo last week backed a proposal to phase in any changes resulting from the first countywide reassessment in nearly a decade.
The proposal, which was made by Nassau County Executive Laura Curran with strong backing on both sides of the aisle in the county Legislature, is called the Taxpayer Protection Plan.
But the name is a misnomer. It should really be called the Taxpayer Protection Plan for the 52 percent of Homeowners Who Have Underpaid Their Taxes for Up to Eight Years.
The 52 percent, who are generally among the county’s more affluent taxpayers, got to underpay their property taxes by challenging the county’s totally inaccurate assessment system under Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano.
They did this with the encouragement of town and county officials, Democrats and Republicans, often with the assistance of firms specializing in tax challenges. Not so coincidentally, perhaps, the firms challenging the taxes were the largest campaign contributors to county officeholders.
Those who underpaid their taxes would get to continue to underpay their taxes for the next five years under the proposal backed by the governor. Just by a declining percentage.
For the other 48 percent, less affluent homeowners who have been overpaying their taxes, they will receive no protection or compensation for overpaying their taxes in past years.
In fact, they will continue to overpay their taxes for the next five years. Just by a declining percentage.
The phase-in appears to be politically popular with elected officials on both sides of the political aisle who have rushed to the aid of homeowners facing sharp jumps in their tax bills.
This is, in some ways, an understandable response to homeowners shocked by the actual cost of government in Nassau – including the county, school districts and special districts.
Left unsaid is that those receiving the greatest increases saved the most money by underpaying their taxes by the greatest amount in previous years.
Those facing large increases now were the big winners under the county’s broken system. And now they continue to win.
Where was the elected officials’ concern the past eight years when the county’s broken assessment system resulted in many people overpaying their taxes? Where is it now?
County legislators encouraged the tax challenges while doing little or nothing to fix the county’s broken county assessment system.
Mangano never even hired a certified tax assessor during his eight years in office – at a time when the county’s finances were being overwhelmed by the cost of tax challenges. Where was the outrage then?
The Mangano administration’s practice of granting thousands of reductions to homeowners who grieved their taxes shifted “$2.2 billion in taxes from generally more affluent property owners who successfully appealed their property taxes over their values over seven years to generally less affluent owners who did not.”
Who said this? Not the county legislators. Not the county comptroller. No, it took a newspaper, Newsday, to investigate the impact of the county’s assessment system.
The question that should be asked is whether continuing to allow generally more affluent homeowners to underpay their taxes while less affluent overpay their taxes is fair.
We don’t think so.
This unfairness is compounded by the fact that less affluent homeowners generally send their children to schools that spend well less per pupil than children of more affluent homeowners.
And by overpaying their property taxes, they are, in effect, subsidizing that disparity, which can be $10,000 per pupil or more.
So much for a level playing field for all children.
Even the 2 percent cap on tax increases initiated by Cuomo with strong support in Nassau County works against children attending schools that spend well below the top schools in the county.
The tax cap creates an additional hurdle for school districts seeking to narrow the gap with higher spending schools by requiring approval by 60 percent of the vote — rather than 50 percent — for budgets that exceed the cap. Good luck with that.
As President Donald Trump’s tax plan limiting federal tax deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000 goes into effect, school districts will face greater difficulty in getting budgets approved with 50 percent of the vote let alone 60 percent.
Cuomo increased the likelihood that the proposed phase-in of changes caused by the county reassessment will be approved by tucking it into his 2019-20 state budget proposal.
That means state lawmakers wouldn’t have to vote on it as a stand-alone piece of legislation but rather as one component of a $175 billion plan to fund schools, hospitals and other programs.
The next step would be the adoption of a local law by the Nassau County Legislature.
“The time frame works for a lot of people,” Curran spokeswoman Christine Geed was quoted by Newsday as saying of the phase-in, adding that the phased-in tax adjustments were “more palatable for our residents.”
Curran deserves a great deal of credit for taking the steps necessary to fix the disgraceful assessment system left by Mangano.
This began with the hiring of a certified tax assessor, initiating a countywide reassessment, the appointment last week of a watchdog to oversee the process and the scheduling of 57 public forums by Curran to explain the reassessment.
We are confident that these efforts will lead to a system in which people will eventually pay their fair share of taxes.
But we think that should start now – not five years from now. That might not be the most politically palatable solution, but it would be the fairest.
