At the last New Hyde Park Village Board meeting Mayor Warren Tackenberg released a statement regarding the failure of the Nassau County Legislators to vote to share the sales tax revenue with the villages in their recent budget.

The Illustrated then contacted Legislator Richard Nicolello for his comments regarding the statements made by Mayor Tackenberg.

The following is Mayor Tackenberg's statement in its entirety and then Legislator Nicolello's response:

The Nassau County Village Officials Association, representing the 64 villages in our county has lost in its bid to share in the country sales tax in the 1998 budget.

The sharing of county sales tax revenue would have given the Village of New Hyde Park $210,000 next year. Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta had earmarked $9,000,000 for villages, which is only .0045 percent of the $2.1 billion budget.

Decision Due to Inability to Deal with County Executive

The Legislature's decision not to fund this initiative was due largely to an inability to deal with the county executive and refusal to address the critical operation of the budget on a day-to-day basis.

At present the Legislature is spending $50,000,000 a year on interest because they will not reassess the county and address the 33,905 certiorari claims. According to Newsday the county has borrowed $1 billion to pay off back taxes and other charges owed from all the challenges it has lost.

However, just one day before the passage of the budget, one village did get a prize. The entire Legislature voted to spend $2,600,000 on the refurbishing of the Roslyn Grist Mill. One legislator, Ed Ward proved that the villages were caught in a blood bath when he told the legislature, "It's time to end Gulottanomics."

Many of the village mayors spent a great deal of time at the legislative "Budget Hearings in the hopes that tax revenue sharing would become a reality. It was not to be. An 11th hour inquiry to an outside budget specialist by Legislator Lisanne Altman, of Great Neck, revealed that the $9,000,000 had been removed.

Except for the presentations of the mayors advocating for a share to the tax revenue, there was never any public discussion on the issue. All the legislators said they fought hard for us, behind closed doors. Yet, 14 of the 19 legislators voted in favor of the amended budget. That has to tell you a lot!

All the members sat in silence as Legislators Altman and Roger Corbin defended the villages and our needs. Very few of them could look the audience of mayors in the eye as Chairman of the Nassau County Legislators Bruce Blakeman manipulated the strings.

The $720,000,000 in sales tax is collected yearly from every village taxpayer when he or she purchases any taxable item in this county. The townships of Hempstead, North Hempstead and Oyster Bay as well as the cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach will share $42,900,000 to "reduce their taxes and defray the cost of sanitation."

As a result of the action of the members of the Nassau County Legislature residents of the Village of New Hyde Park have lost $210,000, which would have reduced their taxes and defrayed their cost of sanitation. To my knowledge, almost every legislator was elected to office based on a promise to support villages in this budget item. At press time the Executive Board of the Nassau County Village Officials Association has not met to discuss the inability of the county officials to run the county. But they will meet in tbe near future and I promise you that the Nassau County Village Officials Association will be heard from on this very critical issue.

I am writing in response to a statement made by New Hyde Park Mayor Warren Tackenberg regarding the county budget and the issue of sales taxes.

With the adoption of the 1999 Nassau County Budget by the Legislature, Warren Tackenberg may feel that he "lost": but county residents won "big time." The legislature has taken a major step toward restoring fiscal responsibility to the County of Nassau.

Simply stated, the budgetary practices of the county, dating back to before the existence of the Legislature, has left the county budget with fundamental structural flaws. The 1999 budget, as proposed by County Executive Thomas Gulotta, was filled with highly questionable revenue sources. Every independent financial analyst, including the county comptroller, Fred Parola, urged us to make large scale changes. Just before this past election, the Legislature made some tough decisions and adopted a budget that contained extensive changes. This included spending cuts of more than $50 million. (The legislature has cut more than $100 million since 1996.) We also eliminated $48 million from anticipated revenue from land sales and other "one shots." This included the anticipated sale of property that county does not yet own as well as the sale of another property in Plainview that has shown up in every budget for years, but never gets sold. Further, we eliminated a projected $4 million for a Nassau County credit card and many other specious revenue items.

The Legislature also eliminated $9 million in sales tax revenues that the County Executive Gulotta proposed to give to the 64 village governments in the county. At a time when we were cutting spending by tens of millions of dollars and increasing taxes by 3 percent to fill deficits in various funds, we could not in good conscience give this money to the villages. The 1999 budget represents the best that we could accomplish under the circumstances presented to us. I voted in favor of its adopting and I fully support the 1999 Nassau County Budget.

I also support the concept of revenue sharing with villages. My position is based on my belief in the importance of "home rule." By and large village government provides excellent service to the taxpayers. In future years, contingent upon the fiscal stability of the county, I will support revenue sharing with the villages. In fact, this is exactly what I told Mayor Tackenberg in a letter sent to him in July of 1997. Moreover, at a meeting in August I reiterated to the mayor and members of the Nassau County Village Officials that any revenue sharing must be contingent on the financial well-being of the county.

Mayor Tackenberg is apparently unaware of the nature of the county budget, much of which is federally mandated spending for which we receive state and federal funds. Moreover, much of the county budget is segregated into separate funds for police, fire and other service. To give the village $9 million we would have to either find more spending cuts, which would probably mean layoffs or increase the County General Fund, which is $70 million. This would amount to an increase of approximately 13 percent in taxes for the County General Fund in order to give $9 million to the villages. It makes no sense to raise county general fund taxes in order to disburse monies to village government. The mayor's reference to our plans to rehabilitate the Roslyn Grist Mill as a "prize" to the Village of Roslyn is ill conceived. The historic 18th century mill is owned by the County of Nassau, not the Village of Roslyn. Certainly the mayor cannot be against our efforts to save an important part of our heritage merely because it is situated in another village. The uninformed and inaccurate criticism of county budget deliberations is completely unnecessary. Over the past few years I have seen our local village officials take a similar confrontational approach with state leaders. Those tactics have done nothing to advance the interests of the residents of New Hyde Park. In fact, they have damaged the reputation of our community from Albany to Nassau. I have lived in this community all my life and I have tremendous respect for New Hyde Park residents. I know there are many talented, dedicated individuals both inside and outside of New Hyde Park Village government trying to make the village work better for the residents. I remain hopeful that armed with knowledge of the facts, village residents will encourage their leaders to work constructively with other levels of government so the New Hyde Park taxpayer wins "big time" all the time.