Has Nassau actually frozen property taxes since 2022? A fact check

Your Nassau County property tax bill is the sum of levies from multiple independent taxing jurisdictions:

• School district — typically 60–75% of the total bill
• Nassau County — typically 10–15%
• Town (Hempstead, North Hempstead, or Oyster Bay) — typically 10–15%
• Village (if you live in one) — varies
• Special districts (fire, library, water, sewer, ambulance) — typically 5–10%

The County Executive controls only the second of these — the Nassau County portion. When Blakeman says he hasn’t raised property taxes, he’s accurate about the county portion, which is ~10–15% of your bill. He has no direct authority over the school, town, village, or special-district portions, which together make up ~85–90% of what you pay.

The other jurisdictions have continued to raise levies under the New York property tax cap (the lesser of 2% or the rate of inflation, per General Municipal Law § 3-c) — or by more when piercing the cap:

• School districts. Most Nassau school districts have raised levies near the cap every year. Some have pierced it, requiring 60% voter supermajorities — Lynbrook and Uniondale are doing so for the 2026-27 budget.
• Towns. Hempstead, North Hempstead, and Oyster Bay have all raised levies under the cap. Total Nassau town-level levy growth has averaged around 2%/yr.
• Special districts. Fire, library, water, sewer, and ambulance districts each set their own budgets. Bond issues (especially for fire district equipment and library capital projects) have added one-time bumps in many areas.

The net effect: typical Nassau homeowners have seen total bills grow ~2–3% per year on average since 2022, even though the county portion of those bills has been flat.

Per a Yahoo News / OnTheIssues report from April 2026, Blakeman voted to raise property taxes twice during his earlier stint as Presiding Officer of the Nassau County Legislature — once in 1995 (a 0.6% increase) and once in 1999 (a 9.4% increase). His current campaign messaging frames him as someone who has “never raised taxes,” which critics argue is inconsistent with the 1990s votes.

This is a political fact-check question, not a property-tax question. Both can be true: Blakeman did vote to raise taxes in the legislature in the 1990s, AND Blakeman’s budgets as County Executive (2022–2026) have not raised the county-portion levy.

Three structural reasons:

1. Reassessment redistribution. Nassau reassesses every year. Even if the total county levy is flat, your share of that levy can rise if your assessed value grew faster than the county average.
2. Lost or reduced exemptions. STAR, Senior, and Veterans exemptions are administered separately. A homeowner can see their bill jump because they aged out of Basic and didn’t register for Enhanced STAR, even with all levies flat.
3. Special-district bonds. Voter-approved bond issues at the fire / library / sewer level can add $50–$500 per year to individual bills without touching the county budget.

If your bill is up significantly since 2022 and you live in a non-piercing district, the cause is almost always one of these three, not county budget growth.