Real estate group backs Mangano's tax proposal

A day after a crowd overflowed the Nassau County Legislature chambers protesting County Executive Edward Mangano's $2.6-billion budget, a real estate group backed his proposal to ax the county's longtime guarantee to pay a portion of property tax refunds.

Mangano got the support of the Association for a Better Long Island after hundreds protested at the county legislature in Mineola Monday, including many school representatives angered by the prospect of ending the guarantee.

About 20 Mangano supporters at the protest Monday had called for the passage of the budget.

Since 1938, when it took over the assessment system from towns, the county has paid all refunds for school districts, municipal governments and other taxing districts that arise as a result of assessment appeals.

"These school districts have basically had a credit card to run up all kinds of bills, and it's the county taxpayers that have to pay those bills," said Desmond Ryan, executive director of ABLI, who stood with Mangano at a Mineola news conference touting the plan Tuesday.

Critics contend the move would strain school districts by shifting millions of dollars in tax refunds to their budgets, forcing layoffs and school tax hikes.

Jay L.T. Breakstone, the president of the Nassau-Suffolk School Boards Association, said the county was being unfair in turning its back on the guarantee.

"You don't get equity by being in a financial hole and then getting somebody else to pay your debts," he said, adding the county was simply trying to force other governments to pay for its incompetence.

School boards would be left strapped by the added costs, Breakstone said. "We are spending so much time on the finances of education, we don't have any time to think about education anymore."

Mangano says the county can no longer afford to pay the guarantee and asserts that school districts will be able to absorb the cost by streamlining their budgets.

Otherwise, he said, the county's debt will continue to grow unchecked.

The county refunds an average $100 million annually, more than $80 million of it on behalf of the school districts and other local governments.

Mangano and the association said the present level of taxes required to fund the guarantee are pushing businesses into other counties.

"Nassau County must become structurally sound, and to do that it must be on the same level playing field as every other county in the country," Mangano said.