Are New York Republicans any better than Democrats? It’s not looking that way in Nassau County. After six months of GOP control in Nassau, things are largely business as usual. Rather than face the fiscal music, new County Executive Edward Mangano and the GOP-run Legislature are borrowing big-time, mistreating businesses — and even gambling that gambling will bail out county government.
Make no mistake, Mangano has taken some positive steps. His first act after taking office was to sign the repeal of the county’s 2.5 percent home-energy tax, a campaign promise. In early May, he announced that he would not carry through on a three-year, 13 percent property-tax hike proposed by his predecessor. That’s good stuff for Nassau’s overburdened taxpayers.
But his other key initiatives amount to budget and economic gimmicks that will prove costly in the long run.
Most troubling is his decision to return to long-term borrowing to cover the county’s yearly $100 million-plus bill for tax refunds due to successful appeals of property assessments.
In his State of the County Address in March, Mangano criticized the county’s growing debt and blamed his Democratic predecessor, Tom Suozzi, for not budgeting enough to cover the annual refund costs. But Mangano is shifting the full cost of the refunds out of the operating budget onto long-term borrowing. That’s a return to the bad budgeting of the past.
And early this month, he and the Legislature approved a plan to borrow $86 million to pay for early-retirement packages for county workers.
Long-term borrowing to fund operating expenses is never a good idea; it’s the type of irresponsible budgeting that has put Nassau taxpayers at risk for more than a dozen years. Early this month, Moody’s Investor Services voiced its concern about the county’s borrowing to cover the property-tax refunds. In fact, nearly half of the county’s outstanding debt is tied to property-tax rebates.
Meanwhile, Mangano’s promised fix to the property-tax-assessment system would hit small businesses hard. Commercial-property owners now get about 80 percent of the tax refunds that are due to assessment errors. Mangano wants to force owners contesting their assessments to submit a certified appraisal or good-faith counteroffer by Oct. 1 each year, or pay a $5,000 fine. Owners also wouldn’t get refunds when the county’s assessment was off 10 percent or less.
This isn’t about fixing an unfair, error-plagued system. Instead, it’s about scaring off property-tax appeals from the business community. That’s strange for a Republican.
Then there is Mangano’s plan to help the local economy — or, rather, the lack of any real plan. He made a splash in April by making Nassau another hopeful in the game to get a Shinnecock Nation casino, which he’d put next to a new arena for the NHL’s Islanders in Uniondale.
Casino revenues would help in closing the county’s annual budget deficit, which is expected to top $200 million next year. But a Shinnecock casino is a long shot, at best — and wouldn’t be in place for years. In any case, gambling facilities come with costs to the community as well as benefits.
Borrowing to fund operating expenses; strong-arming businesses; placing a long-shot bet on landing a casino to close budget deficits: It all points to an unwillingness or inability to do the hard work of reining in county spending. That spells trouble for taxpayers.
Mangano would do better offering a detailed plan to downsize bloated county government in order to help county taxpayers.
Raymond J. Keating is a Long Island-based economist and writer.