Hempstead Town, Nassau County Clash Over Tax Rolls

LYNBROOK, NY — Town of Hempstead Supervisor Don Clavin blasted the county's upcoming tax rolls for being chock-full of errors. But Nassau County Executive Laura Curran said it was just "phony politics" and misinformation.

On Monday, Clavin joined with Jeanine Driscoll, the town's Receiver of Taxes, after Driscoll was on a conference call in which Nassau County Assessor David Moog said that the tax rolls that would soon be going out to local governments would contain about 12,000 errors. The county creates the tax rolls based on the assessed value of homes and businesses, which then determines how much people have to pay in property taxes. The town receiver of taxes is the one responsible for collecting the taxes, but has no power in levying them.

“Nassau County’s assessor is knowingly and willingly asking local receivers of taxes to send out 12,000 tax bills that contain the wrong amount of taxes because he can not do his job correctly,” Clavin said. “Adding insult to injury, the thousands of homeowners who will overpay their taxes will have to wait up to a year for the Nassau administration to refund the overcharges. It’s outrageous.”

Homeowners can check their tentative assessed value on the county's website.

Clavin said about 6,000 of the tax roll errors would affect the Town of Hempstead. It was unclear what percentage of the errors applied to businesses and which to homes. According to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are roughly 445,500 households in Nassau County. That would mean the 12,000 errors affect roughly 2.7 percent of households, if all the errors only affect residential properties.

Curran shot back at Clavin at a press conference later in the day. "This is just another batch of deceitful misinformation aimed to scare and mislead our residents," she said. "Our residents deserve better than the same old phony politics."

According to Curran, courts were shutdown for months due to the coronavirus, which greatly slowed the ability of people to grieve their tax filing. Since the courts reopened, Curran said the county has been "full-steam ahead" in trying to make sure everyone's assessments are accurate.

"So for the supervisor and for the receiver of taxes to politicize the pandemic in this way is irresponsible and its embarrassing for them," Curran said.

Clavin and Driscoll said that the county's guarantee that this year's assessment would be the most-accurate to date wasn't true, as evidenced by the 88,000 tax grievances that have been filed, not all of which have yet to be resolved.

“Virtually the only job of the Nassau assessor is to generate an accurate tax roll, which ensures that homeowners are charged the proper amount of taxes,” said Driscoll. “If he can’t get that right, I think it is time for Nassau’s administration to re-examine the work of the assessor and make necessary changes to ensure an accurate tax roll.”

Clavin and Driscoll said that the county should pay refunds for tax grievances in a month instead of a year later, which is what the county usually does, because the assessor is putting out a tax roll with errors.

“Nassau’s assessor had a full year and an additional month to get it right, and his tax roll still has thousands of errors," Clavin said. “Taxpayers should not have to pay for the Nassau assessor’s mistakes and negligence. Fix the tax roll now. "

On top of calling Clavin's cry phony, Curran also criticized him and the Town of Hempstead for withholding federal funds for recovery from the coronavirus. The Town of Hempstead received much more in CARES Act funding from the federal government than the county did — $133 million compared to the county's $103 million. While the town has spent some of the funds, it still has about $100 million left.

"I would like to remind everyone, meanwhile, that the Town of Hempstead is sitting on $100 million of federal money in pandemic relief funds, which they have no clear plan in how to spend," Curran said, adding that the money has to be spent by the end of the year. "And they have refused to negotiate with the county to give a portion of the money to our first responders, Department of Health and other employees who have been on the front lines of this pandemic, and serve the residents of Nassau County, and the Town of Hempstead."