Nassau admits $2.7 million in assessment errors after claiming no mistakes

                                                                                 

 Republican county legislators and Hempstead Town officials denounced County's assessment roll on Dec. 14

Oct. 16:  After Hempstead Town Supervisor Don Clavin and Town Tax Receiver Jeanine Driscoll said there were 12,000 errors in the county's new school property tax assessment roll, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said, "There aren't errors. It's make believe."

Oct. 26:  "These are not errors," agreed Deputy County Attorney Robert Miles, telling county lawmakers that  there were actually 12,000 assessment challenges in the roll, the first to use values from Curran's 2018 reassessment.

Dec. 14:  "These are the corrections we have right now," Miles told county legislators after the Curran administration submitted "Correction of errors" resolutions, that listed hundreds of errors in the assessment roll used to generate last month's school tax bills. Nassau's own calculations estimated those mistakes overcharged homeowners at  least $2.7 million in taxes,  Newsday reported today.

Back in October, Curran accused Clavin and Driscoll of "deceitful misinformation" for saying there were errors in the roll.

Clavin returned fire on Monday just before lawmakers corrected hundreds of errors.

"The truth is out. The numbers don't lie. The county executive did," Clavin said at a news conference. "When we talked about all the errors in October,  she said there are no errors."

The county also said there were no residential school tax increases above $2,000.

"That's totally wrong," Mary Perno, who lives in a senior citizen condominium complex in Seaford, told legislators on Monday. "People in our development saw increases up to $5,100."

She said her community wrote numerous letters about their incorrect assessments but could not get a response from anyone but State Sen. John Brooks (D-Seaford), Legis. Steve Rhoads (R-Bellmore) and Driscoll, a Republican from Garden City.

Driscoll who held a news conference with Rhoads and Perno after the school bills went out,  also reported tax increases of more than $2,000 for a number of Hempstead single-family homes.

Miles on Monday admitted that the assessment department had incorrectly labeled the Seaford complex as new construction, which is assessed at a higher rate than existing buildings. 

He said the "correction of errors" resolutions submitted to the legislature corrected the Seaford assessments as well as other throughout the county.

Miles said those were the only corrections he was aware of on Monday, but acknowledged there could be more.

Yes, mistakes happen.

There were mistakes in the county's first reassessment after 60 years in 2003. But they were aired in public and corrected in public because the county had a board of assessors that would meet and go over the problems in public.

The board was abolished when the county moved in 2008 from an elected assessor to an assessor appointed by the county executive.

In the 2108 reassessment, there was no upfront disclosure of errors by the Curran administration and her appointed assessor David Moog -- just grudging belated acknowledgement after mistakes were uncovered by others.

Curran even removed information from the county's website about the reassessment's phase-in program after the school bills were posted Nov. 1 --  despite a county promise to be more transparent about reassessment to settle a lawsuit.

County taxpayers will pay $685,000 for that promise.

A State Supreme Court judge this month ordered the county to pay $300,000 to attorneys representing homeowners who challenged the legality of Curran's reassessment. The county legislature on Monday authorized the county to pay $385,000 to the Manhattan law firm, Wolf, Haldenstein, Adler, Freeman & Herz, that represented Nassau in that case.

The county legislature also approved a bill written by Legis. John Ferretti (R-Levittown) that orders Curran to restore the phase-in information removed from the county website.

On Monday, talking about the errors, Legis. Rhoads pressed Miles to acknowledge that the assessment department needs to do better.

"The errors have affected hundreds of families who are being charged real dollars, more than what they owe, more than what they deserve to pay. The errors cost real people money time and aggravation," Rhoads said.

"All I want is a recognition on behalf of the department that we need to be better. You would agree with that?" Rhoads asked.

Miles responded, "I am here to tell you what the process is on the correction-of-errors resolutions. That is what I have given you today."

His answer wasn't good enough for Ferretti.

"The nonchalant attitude that you seem to have about an issue like this is really, really concerning to me," Ferretti said.

Perno, he said, "has dozens of outstanding phone calls to the Department of Assessment, dozens of outstanding phone calls to the county executive. All unanswered. Every single one of them."

"These are seniors who over the course of their lives have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars toward their property taxes and this is the way they are being treated? This is outrageous."

"Mr. Moog should be calling these people back, each one of them, and apologize for this disaster. These people have to lay out all this money during the holiday season, most likely have to sacrifice spending on their families in the holidays as a result of that."

"Nobody had enough respect to call them back and explain to them what was going on. They needed to  go to elected lawmakers to resolve this. That's a disgrace. If ever there was an example of why we need an elected assessor, this is it."

"No elected official would treat their constituents like this."