Court: Mangano lacked authority to fire 9

Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano did not have the authority to fire nine property-tax appeals commissioners when he took office, the state's highest court ruled Wednesday.

The Court of Appeals said in its unanimous decision that the legislative intent of the statute that created the commission was to protect it from political influence and allow members to serve full terms.

"The design may frustrate the most recent expression of the electorate's mandate, but it is meant precisely to avoid a wholesale change of membership of the [Assessment Review Commission] upon the installation of each successive administration," the court wrote.

Two weeks after Mangano was sworn into office in 2010, the county counsel informed the commission's members that they were being removed so the administration could put its own people in "to promote and implement the new administration's plans and policies," according to court documents.

Three commissioners -- Dolores Sedacca, Dermot Kelly, and Israel Wasser -- sued. The county had won in two lower courts.

The case now moves to state Supreme Court, where proposed remedies will be heard. It is unclear what will happen to commissioners who were removed and whose terms ended during the litigation. Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli said only one of the fired commissioners has a term with time left.

The court will have to consider whether commissioners with expired terms would be restored and would serve out the amount of time they would have otherwise served. If they're not restored, then there's the question of whether they should be paid for the work they would have done.

The commission was created in 1998 to hear property tax challenges and avoid costly court proceedings. It can have up to nine members with staggered five-year terms. No more than six of the commissioners may be registered in the same political party.

Attorney Kenneth Gartner, who represented the commissioners, said the ruling showed that when "the Legislature puts a framework in place, everyone is required to abide by it."

The administration's "argument had been that the structure was to provide for a very powerful county executive, but even those powers have to be limited to a certain degree," he said.

Six of the commissioners removed by Mangano, a Republican, had been last-minute appointments in final days of Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi's term.

"We are genuinely disappointed that the high court passed on an opportunity to take a stand for governmental reform by rejecting 'midnight appointments' designed to 'pack' a governmental agency on the eve of a new administration taking office to implement the will of the people," Ciampoli said in a statement.

But Ciampoli said he was pleased that the court ruled against the commissioner's request for legal fees.

The commission has six members. It approved 70 percent of assessment challenges in the 2011-12 tax year, compared to 35 percent during the previous year, according to the administration.