Nassau Lawmakers Push County On Property Data, Again

MINEOLA, NY — Nassau lawmakers introduced legislation Thursday with aims to get county officials to honor a settlement — reached over residents’ lawsuit — by posting reassessment data on the county’s website, county officials say.

The settlement, a legal agreement reached last October, includes a provision where the county agreed to post the property data so that residents can access it on the county’s website, but the information still has not been posted, according to county officials.

Residents Eric Berliner, of Port Washington; Robert Fine of Sands Point; Michael Aryeh of Great Neck Estates; and Jill Pesce of Franklin Square challenged the formula the county used in its reassessment back in 2019, saying that it is flawed and makes it difficult for residents to grieve their taxes, the Great Neck Record has reported.

Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) said the lawsuit was filed against County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat, and others in her administration by the residents because they were “frustrated with the inability to access important information, potentially affecting thousands of dollars in property taxes from the reassessment that they were trying to better understand.”

“After reaching a deal to comply, the county simply ignored the court order and did absolutely nothing,” he said.

In the settlement, county officials agreed to “better explain” the different variables and models that were used in calculating assessed values, including publishing maps that show all the market areas that were utilized, Nicolello said. The information would allow residents “to gather and compare data and clear up some of the confusion that the reassessment process has caused,” he added.

Fellow Republican Legis. Bill Gaylor of Mineola said Curran “continually claims how transparent she and her administration are, but the fact is the lack of transparency that is being exhibited over and over again, is shameful and in this particular instance indefensible.”

He went on to call the county’s reassessment flawed from the beginning and “ultimately” resulting in significant tax increases for hundreds of thousands of Nassau homeowners.

“This latest disregard of acting on something that was agreed to is just another example of the lack of respect being shown to the people of Nassau County,” he added.

A spokeswoman from Curran’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The proposed legislation will be reviewed at the committee level before it is put to a full vote later this month.

In January, the legislature’s majority sued Curran’s administration, over the county’s five-year phase-in plan and sought the return of information that was posted to the county’s website, but later removed.

The information was removed from the county’ website in November, coinciding with the time property tax bills were distributed to homeowners featuring tax increases for 65 percent of homeowners, according to Nicolello’s office.

In an affidavit filed with the county’s motion to dismiss the legislators’ lawsuit, Deputy Assessor Robert Miles explained many residents were confused by the estimates of tax savings due to the phase-in exemption because the estimates were "significantly higher" than the actual tax savings, which made it "appear" that "but for the exemption, their taxes would have increased by an unexpectedly high amount."

In order to more accurately estimate the tax savings from the exemption, the county would have to run a pseudo-tax roll, re-calculate the tax savings using the tax rates that would have been applied to each parcel, but for the exemption, according to Miles.

But he explained that it would be a “time-consuming task" performed by "highly skilled" county employees, Miles continued, "however, the work to accurately determine the true tax savings attributable to the exemption will be posted on the Land Records Viewer when complete."