ALBANY — A late bill slipped through the Legislature as part of the $138 billion state budget will provide millions in tax benefits to a Bronx condo complex built by a politically connected developer, The Post has learned.
The sweet deal for 204 owners at the Harbor Pointe at Shorehaven Condominiums, which was included Monday night in the budget deal, was engineered in the state Senate by co-leader Jeff Klein, a Democrat whose district includes the complex.
The same bill was introduced last year but didn’t make it through the Assembly after the Bloomberg administration warned it would cost taxpayers $17 million and set a dangerous precedent.
“By providing a retroactive benefit outside the normal confines of the section 421-a [tax break] program, this bill would undermine the financial stability of the City of New York by incentivizing individual property owners to seek legislation to expand or enrich their as-of-right tax benefits,” wrote Joseph Garba, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s director of state legislative affairs, on June 4, 2013.
But Bronx Assemblyman Marcos Crespo said the de Blasio administration signed off on the deal.
Crespo said some Harbor Pointe owners got a raw deal because their units took more than three years to complete, the deadline for collecting long-term tax breaks under the 421-a program.
As a result, he said, there are two classes of owners in the community — those whose homes are getting the tax break and those who aren’t.
“This was unjust and unfair,” he said.
Crespo attributed the delay in meeting the three-year deadline to changes made in the city’s program after 9/11 and to bad weather.
The complex was constructed by the Beechwood Organization, which calls itself the largest residential developer on Long Island. Its president, Michael Dubb, was named to the board of the New York Racing Association by Long Island Republican Dean Skelos, the other co-leader of the state Senate.
Jerry Romski, a spokesman for Dubb, defended the deal and said the developer won’t benefit himself.
“They should be treated like their neighbors,” Romski said of the 204 owners. “Many of these people are first-time, working-class home buyers.”
Officials said the owners, some of whom bought their condos as far back as 2009, would not be eligible for retroactive tax benefits, only those going forward.
A Klein aide said the total benefit was actually about $350,000 a year, and would not reach $17 million.
But in his “memorandum of opposition,” Bloomberg’s aide Garba cautioned that tampering with the property tax system through the legislative process could have unforeseen consequences.
The mayor’s office did not return e-mails seeking comment.
A spokesman for Klein said the legislation was “a matter of fairness. People paid a price with the tax benefit being built in and this was outside their control.”