Richard Nicolello still has concerns about Nassau assessment phase-in 

Nassau's legislative Presiding Officer Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) says he's not quite ready to schedule a vote on County Executive Laura Curran's bill to phase in changes in the property tax burden due to the countywide reassessment. 

Nicolello said he still has concerns that some of the county's properties were underassessed. " … There’s aberrations with these high-end properties,” he said. "We want to see if there were a vast number of high-end houses” underassessed.

Christopher Ostuni, counsel for majority Republicans, sought a list of homes for which market values on the 2020-21 tentative assessment roll and values shown on the property's "ladder report" differ by more than three percent. Ladder reports show how a property's market value is derived.

Deputy County Attorney Michael Kelly has told Ostuni the request could take three weeks to complete. "We do apologize for the delay, but we are working on getting the information he requested,” Nassau Assessor David Moog said.

Mike Santeramo, deputy county executive for Government Relations & Communications, said Republican lawmakers were, "stalling, and they continue to stall because they're trying to get some cheap political points off of the residents' anxiety and fear."

The State Legislature passed a bill April 1 to phase in changes in the tax burden in Nassau over five years. The county legislature must pass a corresponding local law.

By Scott Eidler

scott.eidler@newsday.com@ScottEidler

Scott Eidler is a deputy editor for the towns department at Newsday. Scott has worked at Newsday since 2012 and previously covered municipal government and education.