Mangano has done more damage to the system in the past four years than had been done in the previous 40. His freezing of prior-year tax assessments has cracked the system wide open. We needed more real-time information, not less. His business and commercial assessment division has so slanted the assessment numbers that it has become impossible to balance the tax rates to help single-family homeowners.

Mangano’s partnership with property tax lawyers, his political promotion to encourage homeowners to file tax grievances and then his orders to county tax officers to give wholesale assessment reductions to everyone who files has busted the system wide open. And because of the reductions in so many commercial/business properties (base proportions), the taxes paid by the single-family homeowner have also increased.

Suozzi has proposed a plan to fix the system that will re-evaluate the freeze to take into account fluctuations in the real estate market, devote the resources and professional staff necessary to fix commercial assessments and implement a tax credit system that will end the unsustainable practice of borrowing to pay refunds.

Every Nassau County homeowner needs to understand that reductions in their assessments did not mean reductions in their taxes.

Mangano wants you to thank him for your tax bill. Has he seen his own bill? It’s up, way up! Thanks to him, the cost of the broken assessment system has been passed on to homeowners in the form of higher tax rates.

Well, tell Ed thanks, but no thanks.

Michael Zapson is the chairman of the Long Beach Democratic Committee, and a former Nassau County legislator and Long Beach city councilman.