Hundreds of tax assessment errors found

For many families in Nassau County struggling to pay the bills as inflation has pushed prices for food, gas and other necessities to all-time highs, for many, a tax increase could be the final blow. Members of the County Legislature’s minority caucus gathered on Wednesday to unveil errors in the county’s tax assessment system, which, due to human error, overcharged 842 residents for school taxes, and one homeowner’s bill soared by 62 percent.
According to the caucus, hundreds of worried homeowners have contacted legislators this month after discovering that they had been charged significantly more than they expected based on previous years and their properties’ values.
“Unfortunately, what we discovered — and not by the leadership of the administration, but . . . from our constituents, from people in the community — (is) that people have lost their exemptions,” Legislator Kevan M. Abrahams, who leads the minority caucus, asserted at the news conference. “The unfortunate thing is that neither the county executive nor anyone in assessment never said anything to anyone.”
Abrahams was referring to tax exemptions granted by the Taxpayer Protection Program, created by former County Executive Laura Curran in 2021, which over a five-year period gives property owners exemptions on increases in the value of their property. State Sen. John Brooks, of Seaford, said that the assessment errors can actually be traced back to former County Executive Edward Mangano’s administration.
“The inaccuracies of the assessed values has an incredible impact on everyone,” Brooks said. “The problem that we’re dealing with today really goes back to the kick-the-can-down-the-road approach that the Mangano administration applied to taxes.”

Scott Diamond, a resident of Levittown, said that he noticed an error in his Taxpayer Protection Program exemption that resulted in an increase of nearly 17 percent in his school tax bill, when he should have had a 40 percent exemption. So he began reaching out to members of his Facebook group, Nassau Grieve Your Tax Assessment, which helps homeowners file grievances and provides other useful links and information. Diamond and others soon realized the scale of the mistake.
“I went on the county website on Oct. 3, and like many owners I was looking to see exactly what my school tax bill was going to be, and I was surprised that it went up more than 10 percent,” Diamond said at the news conference. “I’m a senior, I’m on a fixed income, and this represented an $1,800 swing in my tax bill.”
The legislators expressed outrage and disappointment that homeowners who already have so many expenses will now also be concerned about whether they will overpay their taxes. The county Department of Assessment has sent revised bills to the affected families, and acting County Assessor Matthew Cronin released a statement later on Wednesday in which he said that the issue had been addressed, and that it was the department that had discovered the errors.
“Upon careful review of the methodologies and formulas that were used for the (Taxpayer Protection Program),” Cronin’s statement read, “the Department of Assessment discovered a human error had occurred when a manual calculation was applied to some properties for the 2022-23 year. The Department of Assessment addressed the issue, and the correct TPP calculation has now been applied on the new updated 2022-2023 tax bill.”
Democratic legislators representing the North Shore expressed their concern that such a important issue had not immediately been addressed by the county government and the assessor’s office, particularly because the list of those affected by the error may be longer than the 842 people who have discovered it.
Legislator Josh Lafazan, of Woodbury, who was unable to attend the press conference, said he was worried about the effect the mistakes might have on residents’ faith in local government.
“What I’m feeling is, number one, this is unacceptable, and number two, errors like these erode people’s trust in government,” Lafazan said. “If government can’t get the basics right, then what can they get right?”
Although the county employee who made the error has been disciplined, according to County Executive Bruce Blakeman’s office, Democratic legislators have called for an independent investigation into the incident, to ensure that the mistake can be corrected and that a similar miscalculation doesn’t happen in the future.
Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, of Glen Cove, stressed that the most important thing, going forward, was to make sure county residents are financially safe, and not inadvertently forced to pay unnecessary taxes. She added that there might be another reason for the error.
“This was a human error, and I think part of it is because (the assessment department) is understaffed,” DeRiggi-Whitton said. “I just feel so bad for these people that are opening their tax bills and seeing them skyrocket out of nowhere.”
While the Department of Assessment claims to have found all the errors, residents are encouraged to double-check their school tax bills, and if they find any discrepancies, to contact their local legislator’s office, who will point them in the right direction to redress the error.