Court Opinion

ID: 9715834
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 06:15:39.510644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:38.467177
License: Public Domain

Smith, J.
(dissenting). I agree with Justices Spolzino and Lifson, dissenting in the Appellate Division, that the interpretation of RPTL 1805 (1) advanced by Nassau County, and now adopted by the majority of this Court, eviscerates the statute.
Section 1805 (1) says:
“The assessor of any special assessing unit shall not increase the assessment of any individual parcel classified in class one in any one year, as measured from the assessment on the previous year’s assessment roll, by more than six percent and shall not increase such assessment by more than twenty percent in any five-year period.”
The purpose of the statute could not be clearer: It is to protect property owners from tax increases by limiting increases in their assessments. The protection is not absolute, of course. It is possible to increase taxes without increasing assessments — by increasing tax rates. But since tax rates are the same for everyone, a jurisdiction subject to section 1805 (1) cannot increase the tax on, say, Mrs. Jones’s house by more than six percent in one year unless it increases everyone else’s taxes too.
That, at least, is what the Legislature evidently thought when it enacted section 1805 (1). But Nassau County thinks it has discovered a way around the statute: Just leave Mrs. Jones’s assessment the same, cut everyone else’s assessment in half, and double the tax rate. Now everyone pays the same tax as last year except for Mrs. Jones, who pays double. Incredibly, the majority today holds that this gimmick works. Section 1805 (1) is as useless as if it had never been passed.
To uphold what the County has done the majority must first decide that “assessment” in the statute does not mean “as*262sessed value” — the actual value of the property as determined by the assessor — but “fractional assessment” — the amount obtained after assessed value is multiplied by a percentage. The key, of course, is that the assessed value cannot be changed arbitrarily, but the percentage used to multiply it, and thus the fractional assessment, can be.
The term “assessment” can be used to mean either assessed value or fractional assessment, and indeed is used in both senses in the Real Property Tax Law. RPTL 701 (4) (a) defines “excessive assessment” to mean “an entry on an assessment roll . . . which exceeds the full value of real property”; RPTL 701 (8) (b) defines “unequal assessment” to mean “an entry on the assessment roll . . . made at a higher proportionate valuation than the assessed valuation of other real property in the same class . . . .” Obviously, “assessment” is used to mean assessed value in the first of these statutes, and fractional assessment in the second. If we must choose between the two definitions in interpreting RPTL 1805 (1), we should choose the one that prevents an assessing jurisdiction from frustrating the purpose of the statute.
But we do not even have to choose. Assume for the sake of argument that “assessment” means fractional assessment; the statute still requires that any increase in assessment be “measured from the assessment on the previous year’s assessment roll.” Can anyone doubt that what the Legislature intended was a meaningful year-to-year comparison, not a meaningless one? But the comparison is meaningless unless the percentage used to determine the fractional assessment is held constant from year to year. In other words, if the statute requires comparing fractional assessments, it must require a comparison of fractional assessments obtained by using the same fraction for each year. To hold otherwise is to license blatant evasion. It is as though a statute provided that Nassau County’s budget could not increase by more than six percent from year to year, and Nassau County had sought to comply by stating the first year’s budget in dollars and the second year’s in British pounds.
The majority opinion, for understandable reasons, never addresses the absurdity that results from its reading of RPTL 1805 (1). The majority does not even suggest that the statute, as it has now been interpreted, can effectively serve any function whatever. Instead, the majority spends considerable space on subjects irrelevant to the issue we have to decide.
*263Thus, our decision in Matter of Hellerstein v Assessor of Town of Islip (37 NY2d 1 [1975]) is indeed an important milestone in the history of New York real property taxation, and it is quite true that RPTL article 18, in which section 1805 (1) is contained, was part of the reaction to that decision (majority op at 252-256). It is also true that the Legislature that passed article 18 was much concerned with the allocation of taxes between classes of property — specifically, businesses and homes (id. at 259). But I do not see how any of this is of the slightest help in deciding this case. Section 1805 (1) says nothing about the allocation of tax burdens between classes. Its explicit and only subject is “the assessment of any individual parcel classified in class one”; the other classes are unmentioned. If, as the majority suggests, the legislators of New York had no desire to “limit the distribution of the tax burden within the class of residential taxpayers” (majority op at 259), what on earth did they pass this statute for?
Nor is it relevant that petitioners here did not protest sooner than they did against what the County has done to them. The majority says that “[n]one of the petitioners appeared at the approval hearing for the new assessment roll, or submitted comments to Supreme Court to oppose its adoption” (id. at 258); it also says that the Coleman class action litigation was “widely reported” (id. at 256). But the record does not indicate that petitioners were parties to or were ever asked for their views in the Coleman case, or that they knew or should have known that, as part of the settlement, a state statute was being tossed aside. It is undisputed that petitioners had no obligation to raise the issues they now raise at any earlier time. There is no basis for a laches argument here, and the majority does not say there is. The majority’s comments about petitioners’ inactivity are pure atmosphere.
The majority notes that the settlement of the Coleman litigation is the “mainspring” of this case (id.). It is indeed. In their efforts to settle the Coleman case, the parties to that case, and the court before which it was pending, found RPTL 1805 (1) to be a serious inconvenience. In an order approving, with some modifications, the tax roll that resulted from this settlement, Supreme Court spoke with surprising candor: “A difficulty arises . . . because RPTL 1805 prohibits assessment increases of more than 6% for any individual parcel in any one year. Application of this statutory ceiling to under-assessed properties would thus frustrate the very clear purposes of the [settlement].”
*264Rather than allow the statute to “frustrate” their “purposes,” the Coleman parties and court decided to nullify it. Unfortunately, this Court has now approved their effort. Part of the problem, of course, is that the Coleman settlement has already been implemented, at great trouble and expense. I can understand the majority’s reluctance to hold that a countywide reassessment of “368,043 residential . . . parcels over a three-year period at a cost of roughly $35 million” (majority op at 258) was illegal. But I would not accept Nassau County’s invitation to pull it out of the hole it has dug for itself. If it needs rescuing, it should turn to the Legislature.
Chief Judge Kaye and Judges Ciparick, Graffeo and Pigott concur with Judge Read; Judge Smith dissents in a separate opinion; Judge Jones taking no part.
In each case: Order affirmed, with costs.