By: Doug Miller
State Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg and Sen. Dean G. Skelos have prepared legislation that would give retroactive tax abatements to the co-op and condo owners and small businesses in Long Beach that were buried by last year's reassessment.
"I'm really happy that this is starting to happen," said Long Beach school board Trustee Roy Lester. "I'm looking forward to it passing the houses and the governor signing it so we can get relief to these people who were unfairly taxed last year."
In 1982, the Long Beach Board of Education abandoned Nassau County's four-category property classification system (residential, co-op/condominium, commercial and utility) and adopted a two-category approach (single-family residential and all others), Skelos's office explained in a statement released Monday. Following the 2003 reassessment, the assessed values of Long Beach's utilities, including the property and equipment owned by LIPA, Verizon and KeySpan, were greatly reduced. The result was massive school tax increases for several owners of co-ops, condominiums and commercial properties.
The Weisenberg-Skelos legislation empowers the county assessor to provide credits or refunds to co-op and condominium owners for the difference between their 2003-04 school tax payments and what they would have paid under the four-class system. Co-op and condominium owners will again be subject to the previous tax rate and provided credits against their upcoming school tax bills for last year's overpayment.
Although the Board of Education reverted to the four-class mechanism following the reassessment, approximately 2,200 co-op, condominium and commercial property owners saw tax hikes of as much as 300 percent in their 2003-04 school tax bills. Collectively, this amounted to a $6 million school tax increase for these taxpayers, while the local utilities paid that much less.
Whatever the outcome of the bill in Albany, Long Island Power Authority Chairman Richard Kessell said his utility was ready to make good. "We'll work with them," he said. "Obviously somebody somewhere made a mistake or an omission. We'll work it out."
Kessel estimated that his company's share of the tax abatements will come to roughly $1 million, "but I don't want to negotiate a number in the press," he added. He said he foresees no rate hikes as a result of the bill.
Skelos's office said it was anticipated that the legislation would be approved by the Senate's Local Governments Committee on March 31. The bill also faces the Assembly's Ways and Means and Rules committees, but Weisenberg said Tuesday that he was confident it would be before the full Assembly by the end of April.
"It is because of the close working relationship I have with Senator Skelos that we were successful in pulling this together," Weisenberg said. "When politicians work together, good things happen for the people."
Should the bill get the blessing of Albany and be signed by Gov. George Pataki, the Nassau Legislature would be empowered to authorize the Town of Hempstead tax collector, Donald Clavin, to issue credits to co-op and condo owners and private businesses for next year and to present a bill for the difference to the utilities.
The Weisenberg-Skelos bill will produce no adverse effects on class-one residential property taxpayers, Skelos said.
