There is an odd inversion in the position now being taken in litigation by Katherine Taggart and the Town of Hamden.
The Town did not discover Katherine Taggart's legal history after she began exercising the functions of Town Assessor. It knew about it beforehand. Town Supervisor Wayne Marshfield discussed it publicly. The Town Board's own minutes recorded it. Taggart herself had previously gone back to Delaware County Court seeking relief from the consequences of her felony conviction. And the documentary history of that conviction remains in the files of the Delaware County Clerk.
Nevertheless, Hamden proceeded from employing Taggart in its assessor's office to allowing her to exercise the assessor function. It paid her with public money. Taggart eventually represented herself under oath as the “Town of Hamden Assessor.”
Now Taggart and the Town are defendants in Neroni v. Delaware County, Supreme Court, Delaware County, Index No. EF2025-447, where the legal consequences of that decision are squarely presented: whether Taggart possessed lawful authority to act as assessor; whether assessments made through the exercise of authority she did not lawfully possess are valid; and whether paying public money for that purported exercise of public office constitutes municipal waste.
None of this arrived without warning.
I. The Criminal Record Is a Public Record
The starting point is People of the State of New York v. Katherine M. Covell, Delaware County Court, Indictment/SCI No. 2009-012, Index No. 2009-397.
The March 13, 2009 Indictment charged Katherine M. Covell—now Katherine Taggart—with two counts of Driving While Intoxicated and, in Count III, Vehicular Manslaughter in the Second Degree, Penal Law § 125.12(1), arising from the November 29, 2008 death of Frank Ruiz.
What happened next is established by the court's own records.
The January 22, 2010 Plea Minutes record Covell's guilty plea to Count III, Vehicular Manslaughter in the Second Degree, a Class D felony. The court questioned her under oath concerning the plea and the underlying events and found her guilty upon the plea.
The June 28, 2010 Sentencing Minutes record the resulting sentence: four months in the Delaware County Correctional Facility and five years of probation, with specialized supervision.
The Order Imposing Fine, signed by County Court Judge Carl F. Becker on June 28, 2010, is even more categorical. It recites that Katherine M. Covell had been convicted of Vehicular Manslaughter in the Second Degree, “a Class D Felony,” in violation of Penal Law § 125.12(1).
The Uniform Sentence & Commitment identifies the same offense, the same Penal Law provision and the four-month sentence. The official form expressly identifies Covell as a “FELONY OFFENDER.”
Finally, the Delaware County Court's Certificate of Disposition/Certification of Conviction, dated August 25, 2011, certifies that a conviction was entered against Katherine M. Covell on January 22, 2010 for Vehicular Manslaughter in the Second Degree, a Class D Felony, and that sentence was imposed June 28, 2010.
There is therefore nothing to debate about whether the conviction exists.
II. Nor Is There Any Identity Question: Katherine Covell Is Katherine Taggart
The record eliminates another possible distraction.
In 2020, Taggart herself applied to Delaware County Court to seal the conviction pursuant to CPL 160.59.
Her Notice of Motion and Affidavit in Support of Sealing Pursuant to CPL 160.59, received July 17, 2020, was filed in the name Katherine Taggart, with Covell expressly identified as her former name. She identified the conviction she wanted sealed as the vehicular-manslaughter conviction.
Justice Gary A. Rosa's Decision and Order—Motion to Seal Pursuant to CPL 160.59, dated September 18, 2020, accordingly identifies the applicant as:
Katherine M. Covell
AKA(s): Katherine Taggart.
The order identifies 2009-012, Vehicular Manslaughter Second, Penal Law § 125.12(1), as the conviction and denied the application to seal it because the conviction was not an eligible offense under CPL 160.59(1)(a).
Chief Clerk Kelly Reynolds then sent the decision directly to Katherine M. Taggart by letter dated September 22, 2020, expressly identifying the criminal proceeding as People v. Katherine M. Covell, IND/SCI No. 2009-012, Index No. 2009-397.
These are not Internet allegations about Taggart. They are Taggart's own application and orders and records maintained by the Delaware County Clerk.
III. Hamden Knew Before It Entrusted Taggart With the Assessor Function
Most significant for the present controversy is that the Town of Hamden itself documented its knowledge.
The Minutes of the Town of Hamden Town Board Meeting of July 3, 2024 record that Supervisor Wayne Marshfield affirmatively raised Taggart's felony conviction while discussing the Town's hiring of her as its “Assessor trainee.”
The minutes state that Marshfield distributed a paper to the people attending the meeting—including The Reporter correspondent—addressing concerns about the hiring. The minutes expressly record that Taggart had sustained a felony conviction and then record Marshfield's position that she should be given another chance and would be an asset to Hamden.
That document is important for a reason having nothing to do with whether one agrees with Marshfield's views about rehabilitation.
It establishes notice.
The Town cannot plausibly treat Taggart's legal history as information discovered years afterward. Its Supervisor was publicly discussing that history with the Town Board and the press while Taggart was still being described as the Town's assessor trainee.
There is an important distinction between giving somebody employment and giving somebody public office. Rehabilitation may provide an entirely sensible reason to employ a person with a criminal conviction. It does not authorize a municipality to disregard statutory restrictions governing who may exercise a particular public office.
An assessor is not merely another employee in Town Hall.
New York's Real Property Tax Law establishes the office, prescribes its method of appointment, imposes minimum qualifications, and assigns to the assessor governmental authority over the valuation and assessment of private property for taxation. RPTL § 310 provides that an assessing local government “shall have one assessor”; that an appointive assessor is appointed by the appropriate governmental authority; and, critically, that “[n]o person shall be eligible for appointment as assessor unless he meets the minimum qualification standards established for such office by the commissioner.”
RPTL § 318 separately governs certification and training of assessors.
Independently, Public Officers Law § 30(1)(e), which, according to court precedent, is self-executing, establishes that a holder of public office is deemed to have left that office as soon as that person is convicted of a felony. For Covell/Taggart - she was convicted of a felony BEFORE she was appointed as tax assessor of the Town of Hamden, NY, and therefore she is deemed to have NEVER TAKEN that public office, with all the resulting legal consequences.
IV. Hamden Went Ahead Anyway
That history makes what followed more—not less—significant.
Taggart progressed from assessor clerk/trainee to exercising the assessor function itself. By 2026, Hamden's own records were no longer describing her merely as a trainee or clerk.
The Minutes of the Town of Hamden Town Board Meeting of January 7, 2026 list:
Katherine Taggart, Acting Assessor — $24,000 — monthly
and separately list:
Tina Moshier — Assessor Clerk — $20/hour.
Thus, Hamden's own official records distinguish the two positions. Taggart was being paid public money as Acting Assessor, while Moshier was separately employed as Assessor Clerk.
And Taggart herself has now gone further.
In the pending litigation she submitted an Affidavit of Katherine Taggart, NYSCEF Doc. No. 160, representing under oath that she is the “Town of Hamden Assessor.”
Yet, as a matter of law, Taggart never took that public office, making her affidavit to the court a filing of a false record.
That assertion matters because it is precisely her legal status as a felon that excludes a legal possibility for her to hold a public office that is currently challenged in court.
Yet, Taggart as a litigant currently MOVED TO STRIKE - what? - references to her own conviction for drunk-driving killing of a human being that made it impossible for her to hold a public office that she still usurped, along with its salary.
V. No Lawful Assessor Means a Much Larger Problem Than Taggart's Job Title
This litigation is consequently not about punishing Taggart for a crime committed many years ago. She was already punished by Delaware County Court - inadequately so, but she was.
It concerns governmental authority she is usurping now and the consequences for a large number of people and entities from that usurpation of power.
A tax assessment is not an informal opinion about what somebody's property might be worth. It is governmental action undertaken pursuant to statutory authority and ultimately used to impose a compulsory financial obligation upon the property owner.
The distinction between an authorized public officer and somebody merely performing the officer's functions therefore matters.
The pending complaint challenges assessments imposed upon the Neroni properties and seeks relief based upon the proposition that Taggart lacked lawful authority to exercise the assessor function. It also challenges Hamden's expenditure of public money in compensating her for exercising that purported authority.
Those are logically related but legally distinct consequences.
First, there is the assessment problem. If the person purporting to exercise the statutory authority of assessor is deemed to have vacated (never took) that office, all of her acts in the usurped office do not exist - these tax assessments are legal nullities, which is exactly what is sought to be declared by the court now.
Second, there is the public-money problem. If Hamden knowingly paid municipal funds for the purported exercise of an office by a person legally incapable of exercising that office, the expenditure itself is unlawful and is an unlawful waste of public funds.
Third, there is now an affidavit problem. Taggart has appeared in the litigation and sworn that she is the Town of Hamden Assessor—the very official status that her legal status as a convicted felon extinguished before she knowingly usurped the assessor office.
VI. Hamden Cannot Convert an Authority Question Into a Sympathy Question
The July 3, 2024 Town Board minutes are revealing because they show how the Town framed the matter from the beginning.
Marshfield's response was essentially rehabilitative: Taggart had paid the price imposed by the criminal justice system; considerable time had passed; she deserved another opportunity.
Marshfield had a right to sympathy.
Marshfield had no authority to cancel Taggart's legal status as a convicted felon which barred her from holding public office.
Marshfield crossed that line. He is not a Judge of Delaware County Court. He has no power to relieve Taggart of her status of a convicted felon - which not only bars her from holding any public office, but which deems that office VACANT because of her legal status as a convicted felon.
Hamden knew there was a legal problem before it proceeded. Its own July 3, 2024 minutes prove contemporaneous knowledge of the underlying facts. The Reporter reported the problem a long time ago, and reported that Marshfield claimed that the "Town attorneys" "will look into it".
No matter how hard any attorneys may look into a record of a felony conviction, they cannot see there what is not there - the cancellation of that same status that bars occupation of public office by a convicted felon.
Yet, the Town's later records prove that the Town nevertheless elevated Taggart from assessor trainee to the person actually exercising the assessor function. Its January 7, 2026 minutes document public compensation of $24,000 for the “Acting Assessor.” Taggart's own affidavit now claims the office outright.
So - is Taggart in contempt of criminal court on top of all other legal troubles?
VII. And Now They Are Sued
That sequence is what makes the present litigation entirely unsurprising.
The Town knew.
Taggart knew.
The Delaware County Clerk's records existed.
Taggart herself had invoked those records when she unsuccessfully sought to seal the conviction in 2020.
Hamden's Supervisor publicly addressed the conviction while Taggart was an assessor trainee.
The Town nevertheless allowed her to progress into the assessor function and paid her public money for exercising it. Its own 2026 minutes call her “Acting Assessor.”
Taggart then swore in Supreme Court that she was the Town of Hamden Assessor.
And now Taggart acts outraged and, through counsel, seeks to (1) strike references to her felony conviction, (2) punish the plaintiff - severely - for daring to raise the issue of her usurpation of public office and of all legal consequences that flow from the record of her felony conviction.
But, whether the Supreme Court strikes any references to it or not, the County Court still has the record of her felony conviction, subject to mandatory judicial notice by Supreme Court - or any other court - that is the only legal status of Taggart that matters: her office of Town of Hamden, NY Tax assessor has been vacated before she took it, as a result of her felony conviction for drunk-driving killing of a human being.
And that, on the existing record and under the existing mandatory statutory law, means exactly this: (1) Taggart is NOT a Town of Hamden Tax Assessor; (2) Town of Hamden does not have a tax assessor since the retirement of the previous tax assessor - with all the legal consequences of that situation, which the Town is aware of and deliberately chose to ignore.
With an UNsurprising consequence of being sued for it by property owners/taxpayers.
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