Property tax refunds: back to the future in Nassau County

                                                                            

County Executive Laura Curran

It's back to the bad old days in Nassau County.

County Executive Laura Curran acknowledged in a memo today  "For the first time in years, the county faces significant class one refund liability." 

What that means is that the county may owe a significant amount in property tax refunds to Nassau homeowners because of  court-ordered assessment reductions.

Curran didn't say how much the county may owe.  A spokesman did not respond to a request for the amount.

And its actually the first time in ten years that the county has faced the possibility of significant residential refunds -- ever since former County Executive Edward Mangano instituted an assessment freeze in 2011 and began a mass settlement program of homeowner's property tax assessment grievances.

Democrats have blasted Republican Mangano's assessment freeze and settlement program for distorting the assessment roll and shifting the tax burden onto homeowners who didn't protest their assessments.

Oddly, Democrats didn't complain about the system until Democrat Curran  ran for county executive in 2017 --   even though Newsday had reported periodically since 2012 that the mass settlement program was causing tax bills to skyrocket for homeowners who didn't grieve.

Also, nobody ever mentioned the benefit side of the Mangano program: It saved the county as much as $30 million a year in residential property tax refunds.

Until Mangano instituted his settlement program, the county had racked up average $30 million a year in residential property tax refund debt because of court-ordered assessment reductions after the tax bills went out.

His settlement program vastly reduced the liability by having the county's Assessment Review Commission settle most protests, which deterred all but a handful of homeowners each year from continuing on to small claims court to argue for reductions. SCAR protests generally weren't settled until after the bills went out, which forced homeowners to pay too much upfront and then wait for their money to be refunded.

After Curran was elected, she said she had no choice but to continue the Mangano freeze and settlement program for another two years until her 2018 countywide reassessment took effect. Last Falls school tax bills and this January general tax bills were the first to use the new values.

But more than 200,000 homeowners protested their new assessments and some 80,000 went on to file for small claims assessment review.

Curran made her comment about the refund liability in a memo vetoing Republican county legislators' bill for a referendum asking voters whether they wanted to return to an elected assessor.

The county assessor had been elected for decades until a voters approved a 2008 referendum that changed the position to a county executive appointment.

In her veto memo, Curran blamed the pandemic for the "significant" refund liability. 

"Due to the pandemic, courts were closed for much of 2020 which delayed the ability of taxpayers to file for judicial review of assessments and the small claims assessment review court to resolve claims before the finalization of the 2020-2021 roll."

But if the new assessments were accurate to begin with, there wouldn't be a "significant class one refund liability" regardless of when homeowners filed their protests or when the court acted on them.

And again, if the new assessments are so accurate, why would a top ARC official tell the legislature in January that reductions have been offered to some 200,000 homeowners so far this year -- copying Mangano's mass settlement program?