CUOMO RIVAL’S TAX TO GRIND

Westchester County Exec and Republican gubernatorial candidate Rob Astorino found a way to stick a finger in Gov. Cuomo’s eye. It seems that Cuomo’s companion, Food Network host Sandra Lee, didn’t get permits for interior renovations on her New Castle home, which h she shares with Cuomo. And she wouldn’t let a tax x assessor inside to see the work, her right under the law. aw.

Still, assessor Phil Platz told ld The Post he knows what work she did because he recently read about it in a 2010 story in USA Today, and raised the assessed value by 29 percent. That could mean a tax hike of about $8,200, bringing Lee’s property taxes to a whopping $36,500 on the house she bought for $1.2 million in 2009.

Astorino, effectively the county tax collector, seized on the dispute to roar that “New Yorkers deserve to know whether their governor is a tax cheat.”

That’s a fair point in a vacuum, but let’s not forget the facts at hand. The candidate for lower taxes and smaller government is demanding that a private citizen pay an additional $8,200 in taxes for interior renovations no one outside the house can see. Those renovations are known to the government only because an inspector had time to find a description of them in a 4yearold newspaper story.

That sounds like the essence of big, intrusive government, and $36,500 in property taxes must sound wildly excessive to most New Yorkers.

All things considered, is this really where Astorino wants to plant his campaign flag?