Nassau comptroller releases her assessment audit: Why now? (Updated with pushback from Atty Jeff Gold)

                                                                                     

Elaine Phillips

Amid a tornado of rumors and news stories about Republican Congressman George Santos and his fabricated resume -- and before Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman's  news conference today about his Hub development deal with Los Vegas Sands, including a possible casino -- Republican County Comptroller Elaine Phillips released her long-awaited audit of the county's "broken" assessment system.

You have to wonder about the timing? Why now? The audit is bound to get lost in the craziness about rumored subpoenas of Santos' finances and details of the casino deal, which has been talked about behind closed doors for more than a month. It's almost like Phillips is trying to bury it.

Actually, her review finds nothing that hasn't been reported before:

She started with former Republican County Executive Ed Mangano's decision in 2015 to hire two expert valuation firms to review and adjust the assessment roll. But, she says, their reported weaknesses in the property data were never corrected, even after former Democrat County Executive Laura Curran in 2018 ordered  all properties be reassessed.

She found Curran made unexplained changes to values in the reassessments' tentative roll while the failure to update data led to sudden jumps in fair market values. She said Curran also delayed the capture of new values by implementing a five-year phase-in plan which led to some high-priced properties paying little to no taxes and also to inequities in the tax burdens for  property owners.

Update: Bellmore Attorney Jeff Gold, a Democrat who has been involved in assessment issues since 2002 and runs a 35,000 member Facebook group on how to grieve assessments, responded to Phillips' audit by saying she is "an incompetent party hack who doesn't understand assessment or reassessment."

Gold contends the flaws she cited resulted from Mangano decimating the Department of Assessment (by reducing staff to save money) He said Curran had to immediately reassess because she could not defend the assessment roll, which was badly skewed after Mangano froze assessments for years while granting thousands of value reductions.

Phillips, he added, focused on a few flaws while ignoring the overall improved assessments. "My group could have put that audit together in a few hours. All the issues have been discussed repeatedly. There are no solutions, nor did she indicate that there were alternatives to what was done..."

(It should be noted that Curran froze the assessment roll  in 2021 and 2022. Blakeman froze it again this year.)

 Phillips herself has been the subject of rumors for the past 24 hours, ever since Nassau Republican Chairman Joe Cairo and a slew of Nassau Republican politicians, including Phillips, called for Santos to resign because of what appears to be numerous lies about his background.

Lies -- unless told to federal authorities -- are not illegal. But lying about the source of federal campaign funds and how they are spent could be. The U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District has acknowledged it is investigating Santos' finances --  the same office that indicted and convicted  Mangano on charges of taking kickbacks and his former chief deputy Rob Walker for lying about a payment from a vendor.

Santos has refused to resign, as predicted. But already there is speculation about which Republican  would run for the 3rd District Congressional seat if he should step down.

Democrats are speculating that the GOP will nominate Republican State Sen. Jack Martins, who defeated incumbent Democrat State Sen. Anna Kaplan last November.

But that's unlikely from many pundits point of view.  The state senate, even a minority seat, holds much more patronage for the Nassau GOP organization than a Congressional office. 

And if Martins should win, the Republicans would have to find a replacement for him. More likely, however, Kaplan would win the senate office back in a special election.

But Elaine Phillips, who ironically lost that state senate seat to Kaplan in 2018, could make the run without causing any ripples for the Nassau GOP.

She could run without giving up her comptroller's job, which she holds through 2025. But if she should win and vacate the Comptroller's office, Republicans could choose her replacement.

According to the county charter, if a vacancy occurs in the elected comptroller's seat, the county executive would appoint a replacement, subject to confirmation by the county legislature. That means Blakeman would appoint and the Republican-controlled legislature would confirm.

The charter adds: "Any such appointee shall hold office until and including the thirty-first day of December next succeeding the first annual election after the occurrence of such vacancy at which such vacancy can be lawfully filled by election; at such annual election a successor shall be elected to hold office for the unexpired balance of the term if any."

Meanwhile the Republicans deny the organization has received any subpoenas nor made any plans for a Santos successor if his seat becomes vacant. And maybe Phillips doesn't even want it.

Here is the Phillips news release: