$1.5 million in Nassau assessment errors hit top critics of the administration

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Nassau incorrectly calculated this months school's property tax bills for 842 taxpayers -- including two of probably only ten people in the entire county who understand the county's complicated, convoluted assessment system and would catch the errors: Bellmore Attorney Jeff Gold and associate Scott Diamond.

Jeff Gold

Gold has been involved in assessment for more than two decades and currently runs a Facebook page that advises homeowners on how to grieve their property assessments for free. Diamond is the moderator of the site, which boasts 34,000 members.

Gold also is an active Democrat who supported former Democratic County Executive Laura Curran's and her 2018 reassessment. He has run for office in the past. He and Diamond have openly questioned assessment fixes promised by Republican Bruce Blakeman, who defeated Curran last November.

Understand that Nassau's assessment system is very complicated and almost impossible for the average homeowner to understand. Every county executive in recent memory has pledged to "fix the broken assessment system."

So you would think,  if the administration was trying to establish the credibility of its handling of assessment, someone would make sure that its top critics' tax bills were correct.

But Gold posted on his Facebook page on Oct. 5, two days after the bills came out: "Folks, check your tax bills. The DOA (department of assessment) reduced or eliminated the phase in exemption on numerous properties including me and Scotts. This is either an egregious mistake or a dishonest way to cirvcumvent the 6 percent cap. In my case it resulted in a doubling of my school tax."

The phase-in is part of the "taxpayer protection plan" or tpp, adopted by the state legislature and implemented by Curran to phase-in her reassessment's new housing values over five years to prevent a tax bill shock.

Calculating the phase-in is so complicated that it is very unlikely that anyone else would have caught it. Certainly the Department of Assessment didn't realize it. One of Gold's members posted a question about the phase-in but even his question was difficult to understand.

Gold subsequently updated his post to explain how homeowners could calculate their phase-in. Diamond asked members who found mistakes to let him know. But the explanation is too complicated to explain in this space.

Gold's post was like a clarion call. Democrats and Republicans started asking questions and the tpp error was found.

The legislature's Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport) and the Democratic caucus Tuesday wrote to Acting Assessor Matt Cronin asking for an explanation. They also had a news conference on Wednesday with Diamond.

                                                                                  

Democratic news conference about the error

Abrahams said in his press release. "The tax bill for the Bellmore home of former Assessment Review Commission (ARC) Commissioner Jeff Gold shows a staggering 62 percent increase from $16,694 to $27,047, a total of $10,353. In another, Levittown resident Scott Diamond’s taxes were set to increase by 16.6 percent from $7,122 to $8,304, for a total of $1,182. Coincidentally, Gold and Diamond are the founder of and moderator for, respectively, of the “Nassau Grieve Your Tax Assessment” Facebook community group, and their expertise in assessment increased the speed with which this error was detected in Nassau’s complex assessment system."

Scott Diamond points out tpp error at news conference

Gold subsquently posted: "So ABC news reports that one house in the county saw their taxes improperly increased by 62 percent. My house was that House! Does anyone else find this just too big of a coincidence?

Acting Assessor Cronin told the legislature at a hearing Wednesday that the miscalculation was "human error." He said the county would refund the erroneous extra taxes charged homeowners, estimated  at $1.5 million. 

Since then, all kinds of stories have floated around the county that new bills have been sent out even though the legislature has yet to approve the corrections and that the new calculations are wrong as well. 

This will all have to be sorted out.

Asked today if he had any comment on all the fuss that he and Diamond apparently started, Gold said in an email, "Because the County made an egregious error on 800 tax bills, just as the bills became due,  it was faced with two options: 1) send revised tax bills reflecting increases to 364,000 properties 2) or pay the shortfall caused by its errors out of its coffers.  Of course Blakeman chose expediency over proper governance, as he and the Legislature tried to sweep this under the rug."

This is why you don't make an assessment error on Gold's tax bill.