Good idea, bad math for Nassau tax claims

The Nassau County Legislature had no choice other than to approve a $2.4-million, after-the-fact personal services contract that until Monday was hidden from public view.

That aggressive -- deliberate? -- lack of transparency left lawmakers scrambling to make sense of a significant change in public policy on handling property tax challenges that likely cost some public employees their jobs.

The good news: The county has a way to cut down on residential property tax challenges that over the years have cost Nassau hundreds of millions in refunds and interest.

The bad news: There's no way of knowing whether the plan -- for which Nassau County will pay a private contractor up to $2.4 million -- will keep working when it reverts to assessment-related departments picked near clean by layoffs at a time when appeals are soaring.

The administration of County Executive Edward Mangano put a private firm owned by Matthew Smith to work on residential assessments back in January. But the first sign offs on the contract didn't come until March. Even then, the contract skipped a key stage: The administration decided not to send it to the county legislature.

At one point, the administration tried to slide the contract -- already signed off by a Mangano representative and approved by a state control board overseeing county finances -- into the legislative clerk's office for filing.

But the clerk, William Muller, was smart enough not to accept the document. He determined, at a glance, that it needed legislative approval.

The affair raises a significant, and troubling, issue: If the administration can hide so large an expenditure for so long a time -- under the eyes, even, of a state control board, what other unpaid bills are out there waiting?

In this case, Smith had racked up $1.4 million to "about $1.5 million" -- with another $400,000 waiting -- in bills before the legislature even got the chance to read, much less debate, the contract.

And this particular contract, as the often-heated debate during last night's rules committee showed, was anything but simple.

During testimony, a deputy county attorney acknowledged that Smith and assessment department employees essentially worked in tandem to settle more than 60,000 property tax appeals before they could get to court -- where the county often loses and ends up paying.

Smith handled homeowners represented by lawyers and other tax-cert-appeal representatives; assessment staff dealt with homeowners who appealed their own cases.

The administration said Smith and his staff did not do the work of assessment staff; the Nassau Civil Service Employees Association says otherwise.

All of which means that a good program that will save Nassau money could end up costing taxpayers even more because the administration tried to keep it under wraps. Administration officials said they first believed the contract would be covered under Smith's existing contracts; then said it didn't require lawmakers' approval because he'd been hired as an "expert witness."

Peter Schmitt, the legislature's presiding officer, was not happy. And neither were other members of the rules committee.

And the Nassau Interim Finance Authority shouldn't be happy either because they -- unlike Mullen -- got snookered.

"I am tired of this happening," Schmitt said. "Maybe we have to change the charter."

Maybe.

But wouldn't it be easier, especially since Nassau's under the gun on its finances, if the executive let lawmakers do their job?