W.H. Fire District fails to meet state filing deadline

The West Hempstead Fire District was among nearly 500 fire departments throughout New York state that failed to file required tax cap data with the Office of the State Comptroller — but its commissioners are on the case.

“We’re working with our accounting firm to find out why they didn’t [submit] it,” Commissioner Ronald Magarie told the Herald. “We’re going to make good. We’re not hiding anything — it was just an oversight.”

More than 56 percent of the state’s 882 fire districts passed budgets without filing the data, which was due by Nov. 4, according to the Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. New state law requires fire districts to file their proposed budget data for review by the comptroller’s office prior to adopting their budgets to ensure that the districts’ tax cap calculations are accurate.

To Magarie, missing the filing deadline is not the end of the world, especially considering that this was the first year fire districts were required to do so and, since there’s nothing to hide, West Hempstead is already working on getting the information over to the comptroller’s office.

“Our treasure didn’t realize that he was issued a pin number to file that report,” Magarie said. “Absolutely, we’re not trying to hide anything. … There were so many requirements in the [changeover], I don’t know how our treasurer — he’s usually on top of everything, and he failed to realize that we didn’t do it.”

The West Hempstead Fire District did stay below this year’s 2 percent tax cap: its budget increased 1.9 percent from $1,086,300 in 2011 to $1,107,300 in 2012 — a $21,000 increase.