Abinanti Introduces Bad Legislation

It’s certainly no secret that I lost to Tom Abinanti in the race for the New York State 92^nd Assembly District. While I wasn't happy about losing, I’m not bitter about the outcome. I’m still happy with my campaign and believe with the absence of a war chest like his and the lack of help from the party, I did pretty well. I’m hoping in the future our constituents will see the reality of these vacuous, publicity driven pieces of legislation for what they are. Phony. I hope in the future the voters wake up and vote rationally, not strictly down party lines. We need thinkers.

In a recent Journal News article, Gerald McKinstry, writes about two bills Abinanti has introduced in Albany toward “reforming” tax assessments. Our first issue with this is that it’s not reform. He states, “Fair taxation should be the hallmark of Westchester County. Replacing our patchwork assessment system should be a top priority for state, county and local Westchester officials. In court challenges, tax assessments should be judged by appropriate standards.” He might be right, but it leads to our second issue. There’s a third issue as well, not generated by Abinanti.

Issue one is that all Abinanti is doing is tacking on an additional piece of legislation to the already dysfunctional tax system. He is not reforming, replacing or innovating our tax system from Albany. Ask him. He’ll have a dazzling spin that he had twenty years to hone as a County Legislator. What he’s introduced is a revised version of legislation that was already vetoed by Governor Pataki. But Abinanti knows if he repackages the legislation and reintroduces it, it has a real chance of passing with a new Democratic governor. 

This legislation is purely another added layer of law on top of existing revaluation laws, albeit via billing and/or penalty fees and fines for non-compliance. The County will be authorized to mandate the revaluations. But as was seen with the previous legislation, they’ll still be incapable of doing the revaluations. This means all the communities that he will force to act with this unfunded state mandate will still have to do the revaluation at their expense. I am in favor of revaluation, but not as a mandate from a non-involved (until now) party.

Issue two is that he was part of the coalition in the County Legislature that has tried to take over revaluation by the County, co-opting the home rule authority of each community to do their own revaluations. In fact, the County spent $750,000 to do a photo flyover of all of Westchester County to have before and after pictures so once the bill passed, they could turn on the state's income spigot. How this $750,000 was appropriated is still unknown.

Issue three is the second piece of legislation to change the existing law to require courts to judge commercial property assessments on the basis of a commercial assessment ratio. This is another example of the state taking away our home-rule rights, almost bullying localities into doing something that they may or may not want to do. Regardless of whether they want to do the revaluation or not, it should be their choice, not the state of New York. 

Many of of legislators are attorneys. Attorneys deal with and understand the law. This is another example of Abinanti only knowing one way to get noticed: write a law or two. We have enough laws. We have enough laws on revaluation. Perhaps this one should be shelved - for good.