Corrections

What this site got wrong, and what it says now.

Every figure or claim that changed after it was published, with the date, the pages it appeared on, what it said before, what it says now, and why it was wrong. Nothing here was edited away quietly.

How this works

A campaign that only publishes its wins is a brochure. This page publishes the misses.

Corrections are dated and left in place. When a figure moves, the old value stays visible here alongside the new one, because a reader who acted on the old number deserves to see that it changed and when. Entries are never deleted and never rewritten to look better in hindsight.

A figure with no row in the facts ledger is removed rather than defended. The ledger holds each number with its primary source and the date it was last verified, so a claim that cannot be traced there has no business on the site. Where a correction has a ledger row, this page links to it.

Not everything below is an error of fact. Some entries are figures that went stale between verifications, some are phrasing that argued past the evidence, and some are privacy or display decisions. Each entry says which.

To report one, write to the site's contact address. Point at the page and the sentence. If it is wrong it gets fixed and it gets a dated entry here.

September 2026

2026-09-12

Four of the five abatement projects shift school tax, not all five

Tax breaks, the brief, mechanics

Said: "Five industrial development agency projects ... moved $4,542,118" and, on the brief, "Five industrial development agency agreements moved about $4.5 million a year."
Now: Four of them did. The fifth, Rock 50 LLC, reports $0 of school tax exemption and $0 of school payment in the same filing.
Why: The dollar total does not change, because the fifth project contributes nothing to it. The count was still wrong, and it was wrong in the direction that made the finding sound larger. Five projects do sit in this district and all five appear in the table, which is why the error survived: the table was right and the sentence above it was not. Rock 50 was approved in 2022 and the agency took title partway through 2024, so a zero in its first year says nothing about the fifteen years its agreement still has to run.

Ledger rows: f-ida-project-net, which carries all five projects including the zero, and f-ida-rvc.

2026-09-12

The relief a senior-exemption turnover releases is $6,205 a year, not $7,300

Brief (follow one home sale), mechanics, coverage, print handout and the 8-page PDF

Said: "~$7,300/yr" of school tax stops being spread across the district's other parcels when a senior-exemption home turns over, with a range of about $730 to about $9,500.
Now: An average of $6,205 a year, measured across the 49 class-1 section 467 parcels on the 2025 assessment roll whose exempt value can be isolated. Median $5,755. Range $1,933 to $14,139.
Why: The $7,300 was a model, not a measurement: one parcel's school bill multiplied by an assumed 50 percent exemption level. This page had already retracted that 50 percent level on August 18 as not a statutory tier. In the meantime the shift was measured directly on the assessment roll, parcel by parcel, and that measurement needs no tier assumption at all because it reads each parcel's exemption in dollars. The $304,046 and $372,302 already on this site are the same measurement summed and scaled, not independent confirmations of it: 49 times $6,205 and 60 times $6,205. The old range was worse than stale. It varied the exemption tier while holding one house's bill fixed, so the highest parcel actually measured came in 49 percent above its ceiling. The bill figure the model rested on, "roughly $14,700," is retired as a typical bill: it was the school line on one representative parcel. The exact line, $14,678.57, is now a ledger row of its own, which says in terms that it is not a typical or median bill.

Ledger row: f-467-schoolcost, extended to carry the per-parcel figure. The direct measurement landed on August 27 and these pages were not updated to it until today.

2026-09-12

There is no sourced figure for how many children arrive with a home sale, so the site no longer prints one

Brief (follow one home sale), coverage, print handout and the 8-page PDF

Said: "+1.4 students" per senior-to-family turnover, and on the coverage page, "Refilling all 257 seats would take roughly 184 extra turnovers (257 divided by 1.4)."
Now: Both are removed. The site says plainly that no public source measures how many children arrive with any one sale, and it does not estimate the number of turnovers needed to refill a seat.
Why: The 1.4 was never sourced. It entered this project in its first commit as two children per home multiplied by 70 percent school-age, both stated as assumptions, and the word "assumption" was dropped when the figure moved to the front page. Its citation pointed at a property-tax-cap glossary about the levy growth factor, which says nothing about children. The coverage page then cited the front page as the source, so a reader chasing the provenance came back to the claim itself. Searches of the state education data, the American Community Survey and this project's own source file found nothing that measures it.

No ledger row: there never was one, which is the point. The enrollment decline it was attached to is unaffected and stays at f-enrollment.

2026-09-12

The 2026-27 budget cut a net 50.2 positions, not 62

Brief (stat strip and the county squeeze), mechanics, break-even, print handout and the 8-page PDF

Said: "62 · Positions cut to balance 2026-27," credited to the LI Herald.
Now: A net reduction of 50.2 positions: 22.2 full-time-equivalent teaching positions, 40 teacher assistants and one administrative post eliminated, against 13 facilitator positions restored. The figure is this site's sum of the components, and it is labelled as ours rather than as the newspaper's.
Why: The LI Herald publishes no total. The 62 was 22.2 plus 40, truncated to a whole number, printed under the newspaper's name and dropping both the administrative post and all 13 restorations that the same article reports. It is also a floor: the article names further reductions to clerical staff, bus matrons and facilitator stipends without quantifying them.

Ledger rows: f-positions-net, new, and f-budget27, amended to add the administrative post and the unquantified reductions. Newsletter issue 001 carries the old figure and is left as sent, with this entry as its record.

2026-09-12

The state transfer tax on a typical sale is $3,280, and the site was printing three different numbers for it

Brief (follow one home sale), mechanics, print handout

Said: "~$3,300" on the brief and the mechanics page, $3,280 in the ledger and on the handout, and $3,275 computed live by the address tool. Each was described as a tax on a "sale."
Now: $3,280 everywhere, and the copy says the $820,000 is a median owner-occupied value standing in for a sale price, not a sale price.
Why: No ledger row ever supported $3,300. The tax is charged at $2 for each $500 of consideration or fractional part of it, so on $820,000 it is exactly $3,280, and the address tool now computes it from the same figure the page prints instead of from an unrounded input. The measure itself needed the sharper label: the statutory base is the price actually paid, and an American Community Survey estimate of what owners think their homes are worth is not that.

Ledger rows: f-3280 and f-transfer.

2026-09-12

The senior-owned homes count moves to the current Census release, and the county share drops its denominator

Brief (opening and stat strip), facts ledger, mechanics, break-even, print handout

Said: "2,076 of 7,453" owner households headed by someone 65 or older, from the 2019-23 American Community Survey, printed in the same sentence as a median income from the 2020-24 release. Separately, "61% of Nassau's 56 school districts lost enrollment over the past decade."
Now: 2,081 of 7,444, from the 2020-24 release, so one sentence carries one vintage. And "61% of Nassau's school districts lost enrollment over the decade to 2025."
Why: The share itself does not change: it rounds to 28 percent on both releases, and this page's August 18 entry already settled that population shares print as whole numbers. What was wrong was mixing two survey vintages inside one sentence without labelling either, and linking the superseded table. On the county figure, the source states 61 percent and states no denominator. Welding it to 56 asserted a denominator the source never used, and 61 percent of 56 is 34.2 districts. Nassau does have 56 school districts, which is now its own ledger row, and it is a different list from the 55 districts in the state's STAR comparison table that this site uses elsewhere.

Ledger rows: f-senior-share, f-61pct, and f-nassau-56, new.

2026-09-12

Three figures were removed rather than corrected, because nothing on this site supported them

Print handout and the 8-page PDF, mechanics, break-even

Said: "South Side High ranks #611 nationally"; the graduation rate "runs 98% to 99% against New York's 87%"; and budgets grew "+1.63% (2025-26)".
Now: The rank is gone. The graduation rate is stated as 98 percent alone, with its cohort year. The 2025-26 budget growth figure is gone; the 2026-27 figure of +1.03 percent stays.
Why: Each failed the rule this site runs on: a figure with no row in the facts ledger is removed rather than defended. The national rank is republished every year and the handout named no edition, so on a printed page it asserted the current year forever. The handout's own source list supported 98 percent and neither the 99 nor the statewide 87. The 1.63 percent had no row and implied a 2024-25 budget this site has never published. Two of these helped the argument, which is the reason to say plainly that they went.

Ledger row for what remains: f-budget27. The others had none, which is why they were removed.

2026-09-12

The levy cap is the lesser of two percent or inflation, not a flat two percent

Newsletter issue 001

Said: The levy "can only grow two percent a year."
Now: It "can normally grow only by the lesser of two percent or inflation, two percent for the fifth year running."
Why: The cap base is the lesser of the two, and the sentence contradicted the same issue, which reports this district's own 2026-27 levy rising 2.06 percent. This one sentence is the only edit made to a published issue. Everything else corrected today is on the live pages; the rest of issue 001, including the retired 62 positions, is left as it was sent.

Ledger row: f-cap.

2026-09-10

The next grievance window opens January 4, not January 2

Brief (three ways to lower your bill), facts ledger, newsletter issue 001

Said: "Next window: January 2, 2027."
Now: January 4 to March 1, 2027. The county publishes the 2028-29 tentative roll on January 4, 2027 and takes appeals until March 1, 2027.
Why: January 2, 2027 is a Saturday, and the county's own Assessment Review Calendar sets both the roll publication and the opening of the filing period on the first business day, January 4. The site already carried January 4, 2027 as the senior-exemption application deadline in the same block, so it contradicted itself.

Ledger row: f-freeze. Nothing else in that row changed.

August 2026

2026-08-27

Nassau was not one of two county special assessing units

Facts ledger

Said: "Nassau and Tompkins are the state's only two county special assessing units."
Now: Nassau County is the state's only non-city special assessing unit. Tompkins shares a different label with Nassau, "county assessing unit," which carries no population threshold.
Why: The sentence conflated two separate terms: RPTL 1801(a) defines a special assessing unit as one with a population of at least one million, and Tompkins does not come close.

Ledger row: f-1803a-cap. The class-share math in that row was unaffected.

2026-08-27

Private home addresses were published inside the per-district rate receipts

District data, reconciliation page, source docs

Said: The receipts backing each school district's tax rate cited individual residential properties by street address and ZIP, next to that property's actual combined school tax dollars. The reconciliation page's worked example named one the same way.
Now: Every receipt cites only the parcel's section, block and lot, the key the county's own lookup already uses, alongside the district, the roll year, and the assessed value times rate derivation. The worked example is labeled an illustrative parcel.
Why: A public receipt that pairs a specific house with its tax bill is a path from this site back to a named household, which is not a trade the site's own privacy policy would accept.

Ledger row: f-receipt-sbl, which records the method change and its date. The same pass dropped an unsupported "district median" label from the worked example, because the site's own data did not support it.

2026-08-27

$58,399 was called the section 467 income ceiling

Mechanics, governance options, findings notes

Said: The senior exemption's income ceiling is $58,399.
Now: Nassau has adopted a $50,000 income limit, the maximum state law currently allows, with partial relief on the sliding scale running up to $58,399.
Why: $58,399 is the top of the 5 percent tail of the sliding scale, not the ceiling for the exemption itself. Stating it as the ceiling overstated who qualifies.

Ledger rows: f-467-scale and f-467-tiers. The statutory income cap rises to $75,000 on July 1, 2027, per the text of RPTL 467(3)(a).

2026-08-27

The county records request was described as filed

The brief, facts ledger, coverage, print deck

Said: Several places across the site called the Nassau records request filed, open, or pending.
Now: A records request to the Nassau Department of Assessment is drafted and not yet filed.
Why: No request had ever been submitted. Every one of those sentences claimed a status that had not happened.

Ledger row: f-nassau-parcels. The substantive point is unchanged: the tiered count is unavailable, and getting it published is the third ask.

2026-08-27

The exemption shift was framed against seniors

The brief, mechanics

Said: Roughly $7,300 a year "stops being everyone else's problem" when an exempt home turns over, at "the statutory 50% tier."
Now: That amount had been spread across the district's other parcels, and the sale ends the spreading. The exemption level reads "at a 50% exemption."
Why: The first phrasing put neighbors against seniors instead of describing the mechanism, which is not the argument this site makes. The second was inaccurate: 50 percent occupies a single $1,000 income band on the sliding scale, so it is not a statutory tier.

Phrasing, not a figure. The dollar amounts were unchanged. Sliding scale: f-467-scale.

2026-09-14

The countywide IDA shift per home was $125, not $139

Abatements page

Said: "that is about $139 a year, about $12 a month, on the county's average home."
Now: Measured district by district instead of as one countywide average, the parcel-weighted figure is about $125 a year, about $10 a month.
Why: The $139 figure applied Rockville Centre's own 74.05% class-1 levy share to the entire county. Measured district by district, the districts carrying the most shifted school tax, Valley Stream 30 and Uniondale among them, carry some of the lowest class-1 shares of their own levy, so the countywide-average figure was too high.

Live from September 10, 2026 to September 14, 2026. Ledger rows: f-ida-per-home-by-district (new figure), f-ida-county-per-home (retained, marked superseded).

2026-08-27

The section 467 count was called unobtainable

The brief, mechanics, the county letter

Said: Nobody outside the Department of Assessment can produce a section 467 parcel count for any school district.
Now: The state's parcel-level roll feed yields an approximate count, 71 of Rockville Centre's 6,327 parcels on the 2025 roll. The income tier and the dollar value remain Assessment-only.
Why: The claim was stronger than the evidence. The statewide feed does carry the exemption codes, though it truncates every section 467 sub-code to four digits, so the tier collapses, and its exemption-dollar columns sum to zero for Nassau.

Ledger row: f-467-count, which also records that reading only the first exemption slot returns 55, a 23 percent undercount. The data ask is unchanged and sharper for being accurate.

2026-08-27

The wrong ARC residential ratio

Facts ledger

Said: Nassau's Assessment Review Commission residential ratio is 0.060%.
Now: The class 1 residential ratio is 0.054%. The 0.060% figure is the class 2 and class 4 ratio.
Why: Two ratios on the same commission page were read as one. Re-fetched from the commission's own frequently asked questions.

Ledger row: f-freeze.

2026-08-27

The action kit picked officials off the mailing address

The brief, action kit

Said: The kit decided a resident's school and village cards by matching the words in their mailing address, and it showed Nassau county and school cards for any address at all.
Now: The county legislator resolves against the county's own published district boundaries, the school card keys off the resolved school district, and both are shown only for addresses inside Nassau. Five districts whose published boundaries disagree with the county's current roster never name a legislator.
Why: A mailing address is not a school district. About a fifth of the physical village is zoned to Oceanside schools, so those residents were sent to Rockville Centre's village board for an ask only a school board can answer. A wrong official is worse than a generic card.

Ledger row: f-nassau-officials. Two automated gates now replay a fixed set of addresses through the routing before any deploy.

2026-08-27

The sample kit looked like a personal result

The brief, action kit

Said: A visitor who arrived without entering an address saw a complete, confident set of cards naming Rockville Centre's officials, with nothing marking it as an example.
Now: The sample is labeled as a sample, and every path that cannot produce cards for the address that was asked for clears the kit instead of leaving an old or sample result standing.
Why: Someone outside the village, or someone following a shared link whose address was dropped in transit, would have read Rockville Centre's officials as their own.

No ledger row: this is interface behavior, not a figure. The pre-deploy gate now refuses to run at all against any address that does not survive the round trip.

2026-08-27

A dead county lookup link

The brief, action kit

Said: Residents outside Rockville Centre were pointed at the county's Find My Legislative District page.
Now: Both links point at the county's My Nassau Info lookup, which returns elected officials by address or parcel.
Why: The old address redirected to a page about a county park.

No ledger row: this was a link, not a figure.

2026-08-21

The coverage page published two zeros

Coverage

Said: "0 contact routes opened, 0 self-confirmed sends," printed live beside a nonzero third figure.
Now: The strip appears only when every figure in it is real. A published zero counts as harm, so the whole strip stays down until each number has something behind it.
Why: The rule showed the strip as soon as any one of the three figures was nonzero, and a leftover count from an earlier key satisfied it. Local testing could not catch this: an all-zero store is the one state where "any" and "every" agree.

No ledger row: this was a publishing rule, not a figure.

2026-08-18

Percentages rounded three different ways

The brief, calculator

Said: Owner households headed by someone 65 or older, 27.9%. School levy cap, 2%. Village tax rate increase, +7.2%.
Now: 28%, 2.00% and +7.18%. Population shares round to whole numbers, financial and tax rates carry two decimals.
Why: Not an error: display precision only. The mixed rounding made the levy cap look coarser than the inflation factor it is read against. The ledger rows keep each figure at source precision, so the ledger and the page can differ in decimals by design.

Ledger rows: f-senior-share, f-cap, f-fy27.

2026-08-12

The H.R. 1340 cosponsor count sat three low for a week

The brief, print deck, coverage, the federal letter

Said: 147 cosponsors as of July 2026, including in the prewritten letter a resident would send to their member of Congress.
Now: 150 as of August 2026, counted from the official bill-status bulk feed and corroborated at an independent tracker the same day.
Why: The daily monitor that watches this figure carried its own sunset date and stopped on 2026-08-09, after which three cosponsorships landed with nothing watching. It also carried a hard-coded copy of the number it was supposed to be watching, so it would have compared the live count against its own stale value.

Ledger row: f-hr1340. The monitor now reads the count out of that row at run time and has no end date. The figure has since been refreshed to 153 on 2026-08-14, 154 on 2026-08-26, and 156 on 2026-09-01, all routine and none late.

June 2026, before launch

Nothing on this site was published until it had been checked against a primary source, and the check came back badly. About 120 claims from the project's original working documents were traced one at a time. Roughly half held. About a quarter were stale or imprecise. About a quarter were simply wrong, including the headline.

Four of them would have been fatal in front of a legislative audience. The claim that senior exemptions cost the district revenue was backwards, because New York school districts levy a fixed dollar amount and an exemption shifts that burden onto other taxpayers instead of shrinking the levy. The senior exemption income tiers were wrong and out of date. A proposal borrowed from California solved a problem New York does not have, because New York taxes current assessed value and there is nothing to carry from one house to the next. And the budget deficit the argument was built around had already been closed, by cutting 22 teaching positions and 40 teaching assistants, which turned out to be a far stronger fact than the deficit ever was.

Every one of those was corrected before the first public page went up, which is why the facts ledger exists and why it is the first thing the site asks anyone to check. The full pre-launch correction record, claim by claim, is kept with the project's source documents.

If a number on this site is wrong, saying so is a contribution and it will be credited as one. Write to the site's contact address with the page and the sentence.