EXCLUSIVE
An honest property owner will announce today he intends to sue the city over the tax-assessors scandal, charging he paid more than his fair share of property taxes because others cheated, The Post has learned.
Attorney Jeffrey Golkin told The Post he is filing a notice of the possible lawsuit in the city’s worst municipal scandal in years on behalf of Lori Realty, which owns 356 W. 44th St.
Golkin said he will be suing the city for negligence and fraud – alleging the city did nothing to stop the scandal for years – that caused Lori Realty’s building “to pay twice as much as it should have in taxes.”
Golkin said that when the corrupt assessors improperly reduced values on some buildings, it unfairly burdened other property owners with more than their fair share of taxes.
“If you have a class of property whose assessments have been preferentially fixed, the balance of properties within that class and tax rates on other classes will be higher than they should be,” said Golkin.
A large reduction in values for commercial buildings causes all commercial buildings to pick up less of the city’s tax pie, thus unfairly hitting residential buildings with a higher tax rate and a disproportionate share of taxes.
“Property owners that weren’t partaking in this were unfairly burdened,” said Martin Appelbaum, a spokesperson for Lori Realty.
The feds recently announced the indictment of 18 people, including 16 assessors and two “consultants,” on charges that they took over $10 million in bribes to lower some buildings’ assessed values, saving the owners huge bucks on their property-tax bills.
No developers have been implicated, and real-estate moguls have denied any involvement.
Authorities said the ringleader of the scam, which dates back 30 years, was Albert Schussler, known in the business as “The Old Man.”
Golkin expects the lawsuit could eventually consolidate hundreds of cases as a class-action suit.
Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York thinks the lawsuit will make it more difficult for the city to do its job.
“It had an investigation going on and had no choice but to do what it did,” Spinola said, referring to the decision to let the assessors continue their criminal conduct for years while the investigation proceeded.
Lori Realty’s five-story rent-regulated walk-up pays about $36,000 a year in taxes and loses money every month, a spokesperson said.
Despite 10 years of requests, it has not been granted a reduced assessment.
