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NYPD's 'High Arrest Rate' for Hate Crimes is About 42%


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Mayor de Blasio & NYPD Commissioner Shea (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Hate crimes in the city have skyrocketed over the last three years, to the point that the City Council passed a bill to create an Office of Hate Crime Prevention and Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday announced the creation of a new unit in the NYPD to tackle the problem. But, as the number of complaints about incidents of hate have risen, arrest rates are generally flat at just over 40%, even as the mayor and NYPD commissioner say they are “consistently” capturing those responsible at a “high arrest rate.”

The increase in hate crimes has been driven by a significant uptick in anti-Semitic incidents, from physical attacks to the drawing of swastikas, and following a fatal shooting at a kosher market in Jersey City where three people were killed in a targeted attack of terror, the mayor announced that the NYPD had been building a new Racial and Ethnically Motivated Extremism unit in its Intelligence Bureau. “The unit is focused on identifying any trends and any signs of racially and ethnically motivated extremism so that it can be acted on before any terror or any bias crime occurs,” de Blasio said Wednesday.

The next day, as the mayor and new NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea discussed the city’s response to the Jersey City incident in greater detail, both said the NYPD had a good record of making arrests for hate crimes. “I can tell you that they have a high arrest rate,” Shea said of his detectives, when he was asked how often perpetrators of hate crimes are caught. “I cannot quote it to you, it’s a number that fluctuates on a daily basis, but we have a significant amount of arrests in dealing with these incidents of hate that come up.”

Mayor de Blasio then jumped in to add, “The NYPD consistently finds the perpetrators of these actions – that is the big picture story here. If someone commits an act of hate, particularly a more serious act of hate, they are found, they are prosecuted, and they will pay the price for what they did. So it sometimes is right away, sometimes it may take weeks or months, but overwhelmingly they find the individuals involved and they bring him to justice. We’ll get you the exact numbers.”

The exact numbers, however, don’t support the language used by de Blasio and Shea. Through September of this year, there have been 309 hate crimes with 127 arrests made, a rate of about 41.1%, according to NYPD data. That rate has been relatively stable for the last two years – in 2018, there were 353 hate crimes recorded and arrests were made in 42.4% of those cases; in 2017, there were 325 hate crimes and arrests in 41.5% of cases. NYPD data on hate crimes and arrest rates appears fairly limited, with only a handful of years. According to the data on the police department website, in 2013 there were 59 hate crimes recorded for the entire year, though the posting does not show how many relevant arrests were made.

The mayor’s office did not comment on why he and the police commissioner, despite the NYPD making no arrests in nearly 60% of cases, believe there is a high arrest rate for hate crimes. According to the latest NYPD clearance report – which shows the rates at which eight major felonies are solved – in the third quarter of 2019, there was a citywide clearance rate of 33%; that included a clearance rate of 52.9% for murders, 49.7% for robbery, 67.4% for aggravated assault and 35.3% for burglary. 

Sergeant Jessica McRorie, an NYPD spokesperson, also did not address that fact when Gotham Gazette requested follow-up on the press conference comments and also did not provide a comparison with rates for other crimes. “We will never tolerate hate in our city in any form,” McRorie said in an email. “The NYPD has the largest Hate Crime Task Force in the country comprised of the best hate crime investigators that work tirelessly with our patrol officers, detective squads and community leaders to vigorously investigate every reported hate crime. The NYPD extensively reports on hate crimes consistent with local law on our website and provides the latest data to the media on a weekly basis.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Note - this article has been updated with the latest NYPD clearance rates. 

The Challenges Facing Dermot Shea


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Mayor de Blasio & PC Shea (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


Just a week on the job, new NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea appeared at a solemn press conference in Brooklyn on Thursday, where he addressed the Jersey City murders of two people with ties to Williamsburg as well as the Manhattan murder of an 18-year-old Barnard student. The killings are emblematic of a rise in hate crimes, particularly anti-Semitic ones, and an increase this year in murders in New York City, though those numbers remain near record lows.

He was in Williamsburg with Mayor Bill de Blasio, Shea said, "To express our commitment to you and to all New Yorkers to continue to root out hate and to not rest until acts such as this cowardly violence are brought to justice."

As the newly elevated commissioner of the NYPD, Shea has his work cut out for him in those two areas and many others, including the politics of the high-profile job. Shea took over one of the toughest jobs in the country – overseeing the police force of 36,000 uniformed officers and nearly 20,000 civilian employees in the nation’s largest city, with more than 8 million residents that’s also home to tens of millions of tourists each year and a top terrorism target – amid pivotal shifts, including laws governing the criminal justice system, and rifts.

He takes on the responsibility of repairing trust between the department and many members of the public wary and critical of it while rolling out new programs, overhauling certain divisions and protocols, and ensuring that public safety does not suffer throughout. And he must prepare himself to make the tough decisions that come with increased oversight of police conduct. He must deliver on many promises made by his two recent predecessors and by the official who appointed all three of them, Mayor Bill de Blasio, who will soon be facing his legacy.

Barring any scandal, Shea likely has just over two years as the city’s top cop given that de Blasio’s second and final term expires on December 31, 2021.

Shea, a 28-year veteran of the department who most recently served as chief of detectives, officially assumed the leadership role on December 1 in a private swearing in (an official ceremony was held the next day), taking over from James O’Neill, who had held the department’s top spot for just over three years. He’s the third commissioner to be appointed by de Blasio, under whose tenure major crimes have largely continued to drop each year while arrests and incarceration have also purposefully fallen, the department has adopted new policing strategies but criticism has raged from the right and the left.

“As we said we could in 2014, we have shown that we can drive crime down significantly with a far less intrusive enforcement profile,” Shea said when he was sworn in by the mayor last week at police headquarters in Manhattan. “In fact we have done what many believed was impossible. We’ve pushed crime down while also reducing criminal summons, stops, arrests, and incarceration. And throughout our police department, we are building trust and strengthening relationships in every New York City community and there’s more to do. Neighborhood policing and precision policing are seamlessly blended together and serve, I believe, as a model of American policing and proof that, yes, you can have it all.”

But as the department continues to maintain crime at or near historic lows, that has allowed focused attention on specific aspects of policing – accountability for wrongdoing by officers; increases in rates of certain crimes, like reported rapes; pockets of the city that continue to be plagued by gunfire; and several criminal justice reforms passed by the state Legislature set to take effect in the new year. Even parking placard abuse by officers. There's the constant threat of terrorism, and a City Council considering requiring more transparency around what technology the department uses. Shea must also grapple with an epidemic of suicides among police officers as ten officers have taken their own lives this year. The city has sought to ameliorate the crisis with a new mental health initiative launched in in partnership with New York-Presbyterian Hospital in October to provide greater services to officers.  

While he has immense resources, including a more than $5 billion annual budget, Shea has his plate full, a fact he has readily acknowledged, committing to improved community relations while also sounding an alarm about sweeping changes to pre-trial detention and evidence-sharing about to take effect.

“There are significant challenges on the horizon, however,” he said in his speech, much of which was directed at the many members of the NYPD sitting before him. “We’ve seen some signs of them. People that live in our communities too have already talked about them – looming changes that again will test you and test your ability to keep New Yorkers safe. But I believe we are a very strong organization. I have confidence in you because time after time you have proven your dedication to the people of this great city. And I know we will adapt and work with all of our partners to see changes necessary to keep everyone safe, including our police officers.”

The comments were indicative of Shea’s new perch, where he is expected to weigh in on policy and even politics, often during press conferences with the mayor where in the past he played a supporting role.

City Council Member Joe Borelli, a Staten Island Republican, pointed out perhaps the biggest change that comes with taking the helm of the police department. “One of the most difficult parts of any police commissioner’s job is navigating the political realm of New York City,” he said. “Last week, Chief Shea was a person with a defined role and defined duties and defined expectations, and tomorrow, he's going to be someone who is required to take part in this dance, and it's gonna be a challenge for anyone.”

Neighborhood Policing
The mayor and his three police commissioners: Bill Bratton, then O’Neill, and now Shea, have all emphasized the NYPD’s new neighborhood policing paradigm, which places the same cops on familiar beats across the city and gives them time and orders to build trust between officers and the communities they serve. But despite their claims of its advantages, they have not provided evidence of its efficacy and a long-promised community survey has yet to be published.

Shea will have to prove that the new approach, which was used to justify an expensive expansion of the police force and advocates have at times criticized for turning each community issue into a policing one, is working as intended and that it is sufficiently addressing the credibility and trust gap that has long existed between the police and some communities, particularly communities of color.

After his appointment was announced, Shea quickly went on a listening tour to meet with elected officials, advocates, faith leaders, and others, including making an appearance at the National Action Network’s House of Justice to meet with Al Sharpton and clergy members.

“Unfortunately, the way our laws, and especially our criminal laws are built is that they do criminalize poverty and over-police the most vulnerable communities,” said Marie Ndiaye, supervising attorney of the Decarceration Project at the Legal Aid Society. But she noted that the commissioner and police officers have the discretion to apply them in the most just way possible. “Officers have discretion to not arrest, to not cite, to have someone just stop a behavior they're doing and move about their way,” she said.

Even as the department has shifted its tactics, it has focused on more targeted policing, particularly of gang activity. As a result, thousands of individuals have been placed on a gang database, at times with little justification and even without having committed a crime. Advocates have called for erasing the database – which could include as many as 37,000 people, according to a Brooklyn College report – insisting it is discriminatory and based on racial profiling.  

“The most difficult thing to do is to let folks know that it's a never-ending discussion,” said Public Advocate Jumaane WIlliams, a Democrat, in a recent interview outside City Hall about his expectations for Shea. “So we should always be having discussions of how to make policing better and have safer streets. And those are not competing interests. We can do them at the same time.”

A New Disciplinary System
Last year, then-Commissioner James O’Neill responded to a series of exposes around a lack of accountability at the department by insisting that disciplinary standards had improved and that the department was not riddled with bad actors, but also creating an independent panel to overhaul the NYPD’s internal disciplinary procedures. The panel issued 13 recommendations in February that O’Neill accepted.

Some required little effort and were implemented within two months – supporting amendments to Section 50-a of the state civil rights law, which shields officers’ disciplinary records from public disclosure, preventing the expansion of the scope of 50-a, increased public reporting, publishing of trial room calendars, and enhanced reporting on when disciplinary action does not match a recommendation of the CCRB, the Department Advocate’s Office, or the Deputy Commissioner for Trials.

As commissioner, Shea will have to oversee the continuing implementation of the rest of the recommendations, many of which are underway as well, such as studying a disciplinary matrix for police officers that would clearly outline the possible disciplinary action for different types of misconduct and identifying an outside entity to audit the new disciplinary system.

Transparency and accountability are the main areas where critics say the mayor, who came to office pledging a transformation of the police department, has failed them. Even those like Public Advocate Williams who have supported the neighborhood policing model feel disappointed. “If you're not dealing with accountability, if you're not dealing with the disciplinary issues, if you're not dealing with the transparency issues, it's just not going to go anywhere. And those seem to be the two buckets that we've had the hardest time moving,” he said.

“I'm not sure that it should be that challenging. I can understand it's difficult, but it's the right thing to do,” he added. “Being transparent about...when police have been disciplined is the right thing to do. When there's...police involved and people are hurt, transparency about what occurred on edited footage to the family, those things are the right thing to do and that's that's where the city should be leading the nation. But we’re actually behind the nation, and we seem to be behind in a lot of things, and then call ourselves progressive.”

A Stronger Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB)
Also related to officer discipline, the CCRB, which investigates complaints of misconduct and other specific abuses of authority by police officers, received new powers under a revision to the City Charter approved by voters in November. Besides a larger, more independent board and bigger budget, the CCRB’s executive director now has subpoena power, and the board can investigate instances where officers lie under oath to its investigators. Another measure that was approved requires the NYPD commissioner to explain in writing when he or she chooses to reject or modify a disciplinary recommendation made by the CCRB or an internal NYPD official. 

Operating under these new rules, Shea will be required to be more transparent about disciplinary actions than his predecessors (NYPD commissioners, who have final say, very often reduce the recommended punishment for substantiated misconduct), though it does not entirely inhibit his discretion in how he disciplines his officers. As commissioner, he also chooses three of the 13 members of the board, who are then appointed by the mayor.

Ndiaye recommended “full cooperation with the CCRB and accepting their recommendations where those recommendations make sense, and actually allowing them to do their job.” She added, “Internally, the NYPD should be doing its own robust investigations and really be holding people accountable.”

Evolving Body-Worn Camera Policies
Another area where the commissioner maintains discretion is in the public release of body-worn camera footage of “critical incidents” where individuals are either seriously injured or killed by police officers. The NYPD’s long-sought policy, only recently published, notes that the commissioner will decide within 30 days whether to release the footage.

Advocates have criticized the policy since it leaves disclosure in the commissioner’s hands with no mandates for how the footage is released – the police department can edit and release partial footage as it deems necessary. Shea will also have to work on the ongoing implementation of the body camera program itself, it has only recently reached all 20,000-plus patrol officers, along with other specialized units.

Recent Upticks in Crime
Even though the overall major felony crime rate has continued to decline overall, certain categories of criminal behavior have grown or appeared to grow, requiring a more targeted approach by the NYPD and presenting challenges for Shea as he takes the reins.

Among those are hate crimes, domestic violence homicides, sexual assaults, and some more recent upticks in shootings in certain parts of the city. Through December 1, murders are up 8% this year compared to the same period last year; 2018 saw a record-low number of murders.

Hate crimes have spiked in recent years, largely incidents of anti-Semitic attacks and vandalism. Following the fatal shooting in Jersey City targeting a kosher market, Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday announced that the NYPD had been working to create a new unit to specifically target hate crimes called the Racial and Ethnically Motivated Extremism unit. At the announcement, Shea noted that there has been a 22% increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes this year and that the new unit would aim to prevent rather than just react to such incidents.

Despite murders at or near all-time lows over the last several years, intimate-partner homicides have persisted and even increased, maintaining an increasingly higher percentage of the overall murders in the city. Two murders in November particularly highlighted the protracted nature of the problem, one that the NYPD has few tools to directly address. Rape reports have also risen significantly in recent years, though there are questions around whether that has been the result of social (and to a lesser extent police-departmental) factors encouraging reporting, rather than the actual number of incidents, which are notoriously under-reported even still.

The increase in reports means additional opportunity for the NYPD to arrest perpetrators, though, and presents another challenge for Shea, who as chief of detectives faced criticism around how the Special Victims Division was staffed and operated.

City Council Member Helen Rosenthal, a Manhattan Democrat and chair of the Council’s committee on gender equity, is still waiting to see progress on reforms to the Special Victims Division. A Department of Investigation report last year found that the SVD suffered from severe understaffing which adversely affected sexual assault investigations.

“There is quite a bit of work to be done with that unit coming out of the DOI investigation and report from February 2018 and we haven't achieved the things that they called for in that report that the Police Department committed to,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “We're asking for there to be an intentional effort for trauma-informed investigations, and that happens through good training, good supervision, more staff. So they still have a ways to go.”

Cuomo's MTA Policing Plan and Subway Crimes
Serious crimes in the city’s subway system, which is used by nearly 6 million riders each day, have also declined in recent years, though there has been an increase in robberies and specific categories of misdemeanor crimes, including sexual misconduct. Governor Andrew Cuomo repeatedly inflated the problem, however, when he pushed the MTA to hire 500 new police officers who would also work to crack down on fare evasion and address the growing number of homeless people on the subway system. (Cuomo’s description of crime in the subways drew multiple rebukes from then-NYPD Commissioner O’Neill, among others.)

Those new MTA police hires were announced after an earlier diversion of 500 officers to the fare evasion beat by the NYPD and the MTA. The increased police presence has been met with a swift backlash from some elected officials and advocates, who say that it disproportionately harms New Yorkers of color and criminalizes poverty. They also note that the new hires will cost hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years, resources that could be put to fare-reduction initiatives or to invest in the communities where residents cannot afford to pay fares, or even toward better bus and subway service, which can encourage more people who can afford the fare but skip it to pay.

Several recent incidents caught on video have added fuel to those critiques.

“The problems of police misconduct are deeply embedded in the mission of policing,” wrote Alex Vitale, professor of sociology at Brooklyn College, for The Nation, outlining how he believes the NYPD needs to change after O’Neill. “While the lowest-level interactions have been reduced, police continue to wage a war on drugs, gangs, disorder, and terror, and those wars are going to be waged in a confrontational way. And anyone who resists those wars (even passively), like Eric Garner, will be subjected to escalation, not de-escalation, regardless of how much training is conducted.”

He added, “O’Neill leaves office having achieved no real improvements in police transparency, accountability, or behavior. Instead, he leaves his successor, NYPD insider Dermott Shea, with a host of unresolved issues and a hostile workforce committed to resisting change.”

Implementing Criminal Justice Reforms
Under the category of resisting change may be Shea’s repeatedly expressed concerns about sweeping criminal justice reforms passed by the State Legislature and Governor Cuomo earlier this year and set to take effect in January. They include the elimination of cash bail for misdemeanors and a vast number of non-violent felonies and new open discovery laws that allow a defendant to receive the evidence against them on a faster timeline.

Reformers and advocates hailed the new laws, particularly the bail reforms aimed at equalizing a system where people who have yet to be found guilty of a crime can spend months, even years in jail simply because they cannot afford to pay for their freedom. According to the Vera Institute of Justice, that law would apply in 90% of arrests.

“I think Shea’s going to be in charge of overseeing a real culture change within the NYPD,” Ndiaye said. “The majority of this is not only following the letter of the law, which is of course, important, but following the spirit of the laws, which is to limit people's interaction with the criminal justice system and to mitigate the harms that come with that as much as possible.”

Public Advocate Williams said, “We have to support these type of reforms while investing in the things that we know make communities safer and my hope is that the commissioner will join us.”

The reforms have, however, prompted a backlash from law enforcement officials and legislators who have predicted that they will lead to an increase in crime, though there is no evidence to back that claim. Some believe the laws will make officers hesitant to do their jobs, knowing that an individual they arrest may soon be out of detention.

“I think the most difficult challenge he's gonna face is the recalibration of the police department in response to bail reform,” Borelli said. “How do you keep patrol officers motivated to do their job when a person they've arrested will be let out before they get home for dinner? It is going to be the most demoralizing change the police department faces in its two-century history.”

Shea himself has expressed some reservations. “We are for reform. We just have some very slight concerns about some parts of this reform that’s coming,” he said at a December 5 news conference on the latest crime statistics, citing some worry about public safety. But, he said the department has been training officers to work under the new system. “We’ve been preparing and planning for this for many months now...We feel well prepared as an agency in terms of being ready for this. And if there are any bumps in the road we will learn from it and quickly.”

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Ben Max contributed to this article.

Note - this article has been updated with references to the NYPD gang database. 

Note - this article has been updated. 

What to Watch for When the City's Property Tax Commission Finally Issues Its Report


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(photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


“To be the fairest big city, you need a fair tax system. For too long, New York City taxpayers have had to grapple with a property tax system that is too opaque, too complex, and just feels unfair,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said in May 2018 after announcing the creation of a commission to examine the issue. “New Yorkers need property tax reform, and this advisory commission will put us on the road to achieve it,” he said.

When the New York City Advisory Commission on Property Tax Reform releases its final report, promised by the end of the year, it has the potential to upend the city’s methods for collecting real estate taxes, impacting its most stable source of revenue -- supporting roughly a third of the current $94.4 billion budget. The result is expected to be recommendations to create a more rational and equitable system, and with it a new field of winners and losers.

Commission Chair Marc Shaw told Gotham Gazette last week that the report would be “out soon,” at which point a slew of public debates will be triggered before the hard work of policy-crafting begins for city and state lawmakers. Much of the city’s property tax system is governed by state law. De Blasio has promised to push for reform once he receives the report and the next state legislative session begins in January.

“This commission is coming back this year with recommendations,” the mayor said in a July WNYC radio interview. “Two things then happen. Some [recommended changes] will be part of city law, which means they can be voted on by the City Council, and then I decide of course whether to sign or not, and the other [changes have] to be done by state law.”

“The state legislative session begins in January,” de Blasio continued. “We’re coming up to the point where these things are going to be put on the table and resolved.”

The commission was created by de Blasio and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson in May 2018 as a way to lay the groundwork for reforming a system described as byzantine, illogical, and unequal -- and one that is largely controlled by state law. It was also partially a response to a lawsuit filed against the city and state calling the property tax system unconstitutional (the suit survived a motion to dismiss, which is currently being appealed).

The commission held a series of public meetings throughout the first half of 2018 to hear from experts and solicit recommendations. Since February, the commission has been working out of public view as it attempts to tackle a complex problem.

“It deserves some care. There is no single easy or obvious way to create a fairer system,” a spokesperson for Johnson told Gotham Gazette in May. But the spring turned to summer, then fall and now winter, with no commission report.

"Property taxes were a top issue in the Mayoral race and Mayor de Blasio committed then to establish a property tax commission to address the inequities with the current property tax system,” said Staten Island Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, de Blasio’s Republican challenger in the 2017 mayoral race, in a statement Wednesday asking for the results of the commission. “People across the five boroughs testified over a year ago and he promised that his commission would present a report of its findings and recommendations before the end of the year.”

Everyone feels the effect of property taxes, from small-home owners to local businesses to landlords and tenants. For almost all property owners -- and those who pay property taxes through rent -- property taxes have risen every year over the past two decades with the relatively stable growth in the real estate market. Almost everyone feels they are too high, even those who pay relatively little.

The property tax system, by and large, is a creature of state law, which dictates the criteria for valuing property in each of its statutorily-designated “classes:” small homes, apartment buildings, utilities, and commercial property. But the city controls the rate at which taxes are levied and the Department of Finance comes up with the formula for determining a specific property’s value based on the state’s broad requirements. Experts say each of these steps comes with flaws the commission could address.

“The Advisory Commission’s recommendations for property tax reforms should reduce inequities in property tax burdens both within and across the existing tax classes, while improving the system’s transparency and simplicity,” wrote Ana Champeny, Director of City Studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, in an email to Gotham Gazette.

With the promise of the commission’s non-binding recommendations, state legislators have been spurred to consider potential changes they may be facing, with some beginning to prepare their staff, committees, and constituents for potentially groundbreaking shifts. But the commission, which is mandated to avoid recommendations that would diminish city revenue, may also offer a reality check to local officials who have historically tried to insulate themselves from the political fallout of raising taxes or cutting services.

At the heart of the issue is inequity across the system. State law divides properties into categories, each to be valued and levied differently, based on the outdated logic of the way land was used when the current system was enshrined in the 1980s. A system of assessment limitations created at the state-level to shield property-owners from rapid market value growth, who would otherwise see their taxes skyrocket, has over the decades distorted the relationship between assessed value and market value.

In perennial attempts to ease the tax burden on particular constituencies, politicians have created a labyrinth of abatements and exemptions that experts say makes understanding one’s real estate taxes virtually impossible for everyday New Yorkers.

“Bottom line is right now owners of multi-million dollar brownstones are paying less in property taxes than people in my district who live in a two family attached house. If that’s not a tale of two cities, I don’t know what is,” wrote City Council Member Justin Brannan, a Brooklyn Democrat representing Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and Bensonhurst, in an email, with apparent reference to Mayor de Blasio’s 2013 campaign slogan.

The phenomenon Brannan describes is likely the result of multiple intertwined issues. The one experts point to most frequently, and which was raised at several commission meetings, is the inconsistent methodology with which different state-defined categories of property are valued.

In Class 1 are 1-, 2-, and 3-family homes, which are assessed on their market value (their actual or estimated sales price). In Class 2, are rental properties, valued based on the income they earn in a year. In Classes 3 and 4 are utilities and commercial properties, assessed based on the utility costs or net income, respectively.

Oddly, co-ops and condos -- which include some of the city’s most expensive apartments -- fall into Class 2 with rental property, valued based on the annual income “comparable” apartments receive in rent, even though they more closely resemble Class 1 properties, which also tend to be occupied by the owner.

What recommendations could be on the table?

>Property Classifications and Value Assessments
Among the suggestions most frequently raised by experts are to rationalize the classification of property types and to assess taxes based on market value (which is not often the case now), with a mechanism of relief for property-owners with low or fixed incomes. But changing that formula will mean some New Yorkers will see their taxes rise, including those who already feel constricted by tax collectors.

Many experts want to see classification changes with co-ops and condos in Class 1, where they would be evaluated based on sales price. Doing so would require a change in state law.

Then there is the way the city identifies comparable properties for the purpose of estimating value, which is done by the Department of Finance. Some of the inequities of the system may be helped by adjusting the department’s criteria for determining whether a property is comparable to another.

>Annual Assessment Increases and Circuit-Breakers
State law also imposes limits on the amount the assessed value of a property can grow over a one- or five-year period, which can result in inequity within a given tax class. In areas experiencing acute gentrification this can mean property tax rates lag behind the market value. Studies have found homeowners in the Bronx and Staten Island pay a much higher effective tax rate than the owners of similar property in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Many want to see the state eliminate those “caps and phase-ins.” But doing so could have consequences for homeowners with low, fixed, or even middle incomes -- especially in up-and-coming neighborhoods -- who purchased property when prices were low. To help them keep their homes when the market leaps, a number of experts and elected officials have called for “circuit-breakers,” which offer relief by mitigating property tax liability based on a household’s annual income.

Champeny said circuit-breakers are a more efficient and targeted form of relief than many of the piecemeal abatements and rebates currently in place.

But while contributing to inequities across the system, caps and phase-ins also provide a degree of stability, which is important to maintain the city’s largest revenue stream. When a small home experiences market growth that outpaces the statutory limits on assessment growth over a few years or decades, the assessed value will continue to increase even if the market slows. This provides a buffer for the city during periods of economic contraction. Eliminating caps and phase-ins without undermining the city’s fiscal stability will be one of the challenges the tax commission faces.

“The city’s fiscal health has benefited from the stability inherent in the structure of the current system,” Champeny wrote. “Proposed changes should not adversely impact the long-run stability and reliability of the tax as the City’s primary revenue source.”

>Adjusting the Tax Rate
The city under Mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio has harnessed the skyrocketing price of real estate to increase property tax revenue without changing the tax rate. One way to deal with potential fluctuations in property taxes, either as a result of market changes or changes in the law, is for the mayor and City Council to adjust the tax rate, which has been frozen since 2009.

The Citizens Budget Commission supports a system that favors residential over commercial property and utilities, which Champeny says can be achieved with differential assessment methods or through different tax rates. Class 1 should be saddled with the lowest tax burden (as measured by market value), followed by rental buildings, utilities, and finally commercial properties, she recently said in testimony to the state Senate.

If co-ops and condos are moved into Class 1, like many advocates and elected officials want, over half of the city’s roughly 3 million taxable residential units will fall within it. That new arrangement, along with any changes to the way co-ops and condos are valued, will have implications for the city’s tax rate if it is to maintain its current levy.

>Considering Tenants
Property-owners are not the only ones squeezed by the system. Often the property tax burden for rentals is felt by both landlords and tenants. Some advocates and elected officials want to make sure tenants are considered when lawmakers approach reform.

“Tenants of rent-stabilized units need guarantees that savings will be passed on to them if property taxes decline on rental properties,” Brannan wrote. There are roughly 2 million tenants in about 1 million rent-stabilized apartments in the city.

“Lessening the burden on rental properties can only help the city’s considerable challenge in preserving affordable housing,” he added.

Property taxes make up about 30 percent of the operating cost of rent-regulated units and increased assessments contribute to the rising cost of housing, according to a spokesperson for the Partnership for New York City, an advocacy group for the city’s business community. Kathryn Wylde, the Partnership’s President and CEO, supports reclassifying rent-regulated housing to reduce the tax liability of those properties.

Suing for Reform
The city’s commission is not the only thing compelling lawmakers to act. The aforementioned lawsuit filed by Tax Equity Now New York, a group led by former Department of Finance Commissioner Martha Stark, is challenging the property tax system on constitutional grounds.

“The property tax system is in need of a complete overhaul that should be guided by legal principles enunciated by the court. While the Commission may come up with some good ideas, without the court's guidance those ideas may fail to garner the support of those who need to enact any changes,” Stark wrote in an email to Gotham Gazette.

“The system is unconstitutional, illegal, and discriminatory,” she wrote, “the court is in the best position to offer the parameters for an overhaul that balances these fundamental issues.”

[Read: State Senators Look Ahead to Complicated Task of Property Tax Reform]

[Read: An Old, Unfair System: New York City's Property Tax Conundrum]

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Gotham Gazette: New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
New York Voters Approve $4.2 Billion Environmental Bond Act
Gotham Gazette: 
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
New York City Voters Approve Racial Justice Ballot Measures
Gotham Gazette: 
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Housing Development in New York City Slows to a Crawl as Officials Debate Tax Incentives
Gotham Gazette: 
City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years City Council Examines Low Voter Turnout, Moving Local Elections to Even Years