Five Towns village join Freeport lawsuit

Municipalities sue town and county for $20 million in sales tax

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Atlantic Beach, Cedarhurst, Hewlett Bay Park, Hewlett Harbor and Woodsburgh, along with six other Nassau County villages, have joined a lawsuit lead by Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy against Nassau County and the Town of Hempstead for not fairly sharing sales tax revenue with the municipalities.
Kennedy first filed a $2.5 million notice of claim on June 1, but then amended the claim for a minimum of $20 million on June 31, to include the 11 other villages that had joined.

Kennedy said Rockville Centre has filed their own suit, while Island Park, Lawrence and Malverne have not. “In the event a settlement is agreed between the town, county and villages,” Kennedy said, “I will not include villages that elected to not participate in our legal action.”

Nassau County is authorized to collect 0.75 percent of state sales tax and distributes one-third of that to cities and towns in the form of local assistance programs to minimize real property taxes and defray the costs of collecting, transporting, treatment and disposal of solid waste, documents show.

According to Kennedy, however, the Town of Hempstead does not provide solid-waste management to villages. And villages such as Freeport, which has its own water, sanitation and police departments and an electric company, need a greater share of sales tax revenue to maintain services, he said.

Cedarhurst Mayor Benjamin Weinstock stated that it is his hope that the county and town won’t fight this to, “the bitter end,” and that by acknowledging that the money is owed to them they will, “Establish a precedent to pay the funds that are owed, and to not play games.”

“The Village of Atlantic Beach will not see a huge financial benefit from the lawsuit, but we should still receive our fair share of the sales taxes that are distributed to the town and county,” said Mayor George Pappas, should the courts rule for the villages.

Mark Weiss, the mayor of Hewlett Harbor, said that they have joined the suit because he believes the villages should receive their fair share of the revenue, “Villages are increasingly challenged to maintain their infrastructure and to provide services that are not provided by the County,” he said. “…Village governments should be able to count on their proportionate share of the sales tax revenue rather than be forced to raise their local taxes.”

Lee Israel, the mayor of Woodsburgh, declined to comment on the lawsuit. Karen Contino, a spokeswoman for Nassau County said, “We cannot comment on pending litigation.”

Kennedy has also contacted County Executive Laura Curran and has gone back and forth with her in conversations, but the matter remains unresolved. “County Executive Curran promised to share a fair portion of sales-tax revenues to Nassau County villages before her election,” Kennedy said, “but now has reneged.”

According to Freeport’s Village Attorney Howard Colton, in the late 1990s, then-County Executive Thomas Gulotta, a Republican from North Merrick, distributed a fair share of revenue to the villages. William Glacken, who became Freeport’s mayor in 1997, later negotiated with Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat from Glen Cove who became county executive in 2002, to provide an even greater share of revenue to villages, to be spread out over five years.

The revenue-sharing agreement ended in 2009 with the election of Ed Mangano, a Republican from Bethpage, Colton said.