Among those smarting from the sting of the newly adopted county budget are local village mayors and trustees who had expected legislators to approve a proposal to share sales tax revenues with the 64 incorporated areas in Nassau.

After grappling for weeks with what many of its members described as a "shaky" budget proposal, the county Legislature on Oct. 30 adopted a fiscal plan that significantly altered the budget that had been proposed by County Executive Thomas S. Gulotta.

While the change that received the most notice was an increase in taxes on all homeowners by about $4 a month, or $47 a year on a property assessed at $7,200, also done away with was Gulotta's proposal to share sales tax revenue with the villages, which in turn would likely have led to a series of local tax cuts.

Presently, the county shares a percentage of its sale tax revenue -- approximately $43 million out of a total $720 million -- with its three townships -- Oyster Bay, North Hempstead and Hempstead -- and its two chartered cities, Glen Cove and Long Beach.

The money is bestowed on the smaller municipalities to "reduce their taxes and defray the cost of sanitation."

"There are a lot of angry people," said Floral Park Mayor Steven W. Corbett. "We had a county VOA meeting just this past Tuesday, and I can honestly say that there were a lot of people there I had never seen before, including elected officials from the wealthier north shore villages who you'd have thought would be less upset by this move by the Legislature than the rest of us.

"In all, I think we had something like 24 different villages represented at what was essentially, an emergency meeting called at the last minute. For us, that's a pretty good turnout," Mayor Corbett continued.

Though he and a number of his fellow mayors knew in advance of the Legislature's decision to delete the sales tax share proposal from their version of the county budget, Mayor Corbett said that didn't lessen the feeling that they had been "betrayed."

"Mayors Frank Tauches, Ann Castagna [of Garden City and Stewart Manor, respectively] and myself met with our legislator, Vincent Muscarella just before the vote on the budget, and I have to say, even though I had kind of suspected that they'd do this, I was still stunned by it.

"Muscarella told us that the Legislature had to take the action it did because of the shaky nature of Gulotta's budget proposal. Yet, subsequently we learn that the tax increase was actually held down for political reasons. Namely, Presiding Officer Bruce Blakeman's run for State Comptroller.

"If they'd been truly acting responsibly, they'd have set the tax rate at what they really believed it should be, and supported sharing the sales as they promised us they would.

"There's no question, the county budget gave them a direct opportunity to bail out on us. And not only did they bail out on us, they bailed out on Tom Gulotta, all of them, including the county Comptroller Fred Parola. I have to believe that Blakeman and Parola were in cahoots on this from the beginning. They just didn't want to see this happen."

So angry was New Hyde Park Mayor Warren Tackenberg that during a village board meeting there he began a war of words with county legislator Richard Nicolello that continues unabated as this newspaper went to press.

"We lost big time!" Tackenberg declared. "Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta had earmarked $9,000,000 for villages, which is only .0045 percent of the $2.1 billion budget, and yet the Legislature denied us this revenue..

"The sharing of county sales tax revenue would have given the Village of New Hyde Park $210,000 next year. Now we'll see none of that."

Tackenberg charges that the reason the Legislature backed away from sharing the sales tax is that they've failed to address certain critical areas in the day-to-day operation of county government.

"At present," Tackenberg said, "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."

He continued, "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!"

"My position on this issue has been pretty clear, and I believe the mayors know this," Legislator Nicolello told this newspaper. "Last summer, at their meeting at the Westbury Manor, I explained to them that I support their sharing in the sales tax revenue, but at the same time, if we found that the county was in dire financial straits... if we had to raise taxes and cut spending.. then it would make no sense to give up another portion of the sales tax.

"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.

"The fact is, over the past few years, the county executive's projections of sales tax revenue, which are included in his annual budget proposal, have been coming up short."

"You know, even in light of the action we've taken this year, I still support sharing the sales tax with the villages. Fifty-five to 60 percent of my legislative district is villages. Revenue sharing makes sense to me. Unfortunately, we have some problems to address within the county before that revenue sharing can become a reality.

"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."

Floral Park's Mayor Corbett said the VOA is now trying to assess "the best way to attack" this problem.

"Some of our members, the optimists, believe that the budget that was recently adopted by the Legislature can simply be amended, later. I, for one, think this would be highly unprecedented.

"I think we actually have to become more unified and more focused and come up with candidates to depose some of these incumbents in next year's elections.

"As it happened, the vote by the Legislature was 14-to-5, with all the Republicans voting for it and all the Democrats against. I think we have to target a couple of these Republican legislators and really go after them.

"Targeting them -- even if we didn't ultimately knock them off on Election Day, would be a rude awakening for these guys," Mayor Corbett said.