Assemblyman Ed Ra (R-Garden City South) said that legislation he unveiled Tuesday would provide a personal income tax credit to homeowners who will see a property tax decrease but, because of the county executive’s phase-in plan, would not see their full reduction for five years.
Ra said that the legislation would allow residents to see the relief right away. The phase-in would spread those increases over five years but for residents whose taxes will be going down, they will continue to overpay for five years, Ra said, under the measure passed by the New York Legislature.
Opponents of the legislation called it a tactic to delay approving County Executive Laura Curran’s proposed five-year phase-in of new assessment tax increases caused by the recent reassessment in Nassau County.
The phase-in would spread those increases over five years but for residents whose taxes will be going down, they will continue to overpay for five additional years, GOP spokesman Christopher Boyle said.
“Long Island sends Billions of dollars more to Albany than we receive,” county Legislator William Gaylor (R-Lynbrook) said in a news release. “In the County Executive’s proposed phase-in, residents whose taxes are going up will be aided by not having to pay the full increase in the first year, but the residents who will be going down will continue to over-pay for an additional five years.”
Ra’s legislation has the backing of the Republican majority caucus of the Nassau County Legislature, including Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello of New Hyde Park, Boyle said.
Christine Geed, a spokesman for Curran, called Ra’s legislation “a stunt with no possibility of passage” and another distraction delaying action on Curran’s “Taxpayer Protection Plan.”
“Ed Mangano and Nassau County Republicans decimated and corrupted the County’s assessment system at the expense of taxpayers,” Geed said via email. “Expecting residents of New York state to bail out Nassau County is foolish.”
Geed said that it is time for the Nassau GOP to “take responsibility, stop stalling” and support Curran’s plan.
William Biamonte, chief of staff for the county Legislature’s minority caucus, said that if the majority was “truly concerned’ about providing relief to county taxpayers then it would have raised this issue “months ago” during the state budget process.
“Instead, two weeks before an election, they’re grandstanding on a bill that will never pass,” Biamonte said.
He said that the legislative majority could “make a positive difference” by enacting Curran’s phase-in plan.
“After a decade of being complicit in Mangano’s assessment malfeasance, it’s time to finally put taxpayers first and clean up the mess they helped make,” Biamonte said
