CM Morano criticizes administration absence and questions rollout competence
Council Member Frank Morano calls the administration's absence outrageous, arguing litigation doesn't suspend oversight. He questions the discrepancy between the 900,000-property list and 17,000 notices, and asks about error rates and the burden placed on seniors.
Councilman Morano.
Thank you, Chair Bruin.
Thank you, Chair Lee, for holding this hearing.
Thank you to the public, the members of the public that signed up to testify both here and on Zoom, not only the five of you who we've already heard from who all did a brilliant job, but for everybody to
take the time to make sure this doesn't turn into a Clint Eastwood speech of us talking to an empty chair.
And I do want to begin by talking about who's not here today, which obviously is the administration.
And quite frankly, I find that outrageous.
The city was able to identify nearly a million properties and put them on a list connected to this tax.
It was able to find 17,000 homeowners and send them letters telling them they could be subject to a substantial surcharge.
But somehow today, the administration couldn't find its way within the same building to City Hall to answer questions about it.
I find that to be totally unacceptable.
They've cited ongoing litigation.
Well, litigation doesn't suspend legislative oversight.
There are plenty of questions about administration, customer service, data, staffing, and basic competence that don't require anybody to discuss litigation strategy.
I don't accept that.
City administrations testify before this council all...
the time while litigation is pending.
Jason cited a few examples.
In fact, the law department itself has appeared before the council and discussed active lawsuits involving the city.
Just last November, Corporation Council testified about the city's ongoing federal litigation over sanctuary city laws, and the law department routinely
appears before this council while simultaneously representing the city in scores, if not hundreds, of active cases.
Nobody is asking the Department of Finance to waive attorney-client privilege or reveal its litigation strategy.
We're asking basic questions about how a major tax was administered.
What records did you use?
How did you identify the 17,000 homeowners?
How many were identified incorrectly?
Why weren't government records cross-checked first?
And why did you publish a supplemental role containing more than 900,000 properties and associate it with the surcharge?
These are oversight questions.
So when the administration refuses to sit here and answer them, I think New Yorkers are entitled to ask a very simple question.
What are they hiding?
And I particularly want to address something in the administration's written testimony.
They claim they were required to publish this massive supplemental role.
That is very much disputed.
The state law as minority leader car sign.
says the Department of Finance must make an individualized initial determination about whether a covered property is not a primary residence.
What I don't see in that statute is a direction from Albany saying, publish the names and property information of more than 900,000 New Yorkers and describe that list as related to the tax.
In fact, the city's own website now acknowledges that the vast majority of the properties on that roll will not be subject to the surcharge.
Only roughly 17,000 owners even receive notices.
So it would have liked the commissioner sitting here today to explain that discrepancy.
If you truly believe state law required this particular list, come before the council, point us to the language, and answer questions about it.
But you can't make a sweeping assertion in written testimony, decline to appear, and then expect the council to simply accept it.
That's precisely why oversight hearings exist.
Litigation is not a hall pass from legislative oversight.
The more New Yorkers and the more this council learned about this whole process, the more clear it was how rotten it was, how bungled it was, and the more questions we had.
So I sincerely hope that the administration does not decide to make this routine.
What was the error rate?
We don't know.
We don't want to hear a press release from the administration or a talking point.
We want to hear your error rate.
How many New Yorkers did government unnecessarily frighten?
How many hours did people collectively spend fixing something that City Hall could have gotten right beforehand?
How many seniors had to find documents?
How many people called an attorney?
How many people simply assumed that because an official letter came from the Department of Finance, they must have done something wrong?
I'd also ask this, not of you, but of the administration.
The controller estimated that roughly 13,000 properties would be subject to this.
Thank you.
Why the difference in that number?
Thank you.
Thank you.