OSWEGO – Today (March 26), the NYS County Executives Association held a media briefing to discuss New York State budget proposals, the impact on their counties and major items they are focused on in the final week of budget negotiations.
With one week until the start of the new fiscal year, several budget policies will have a significant impact on counties and county taxpayers.
The proposal cited by county leaders as posing the biggest threat to county budgets across the state is the Governor’s proposal to fund the Aid and Incentives for Municiplities (AIM) program out of the county share of sales tax.
This program has been a state responsibility for 40 years.
“The State of New York has a spending problem, and over the years has become too reliant on local tax dollars to fund state programs,” said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the NYS County Executives Association. “If Albany wants to mandate a program or create a new law or provide a new service, they need to fund it. If it’s worth mandating, then it’s worth paying for with the state’s own dollars.”
New York State has been sharing revenue with towns, cities, villages and counties for almost half a century.
In 1990, the state eliminated the revenue-sharing program for counties.
In the late 2000s the state eliminated New York City’s participation in the revenue-sharing program.
Now the state wants to eliminate revenue-sharing for towns and villages, and have counties make them whole with local sales tax revenue.
Counties are calling on Governor Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to fund the AIM program the way it was designed to be funded: by New York State.
Dan McCoy, Albany County Executive, said, “We’ve been making difficult decisions here in Albany County. We’ve been under the cap for the last seven years. We had a zero percent tax increase for six, and this year alone we reduced taxes by 1.5 percent…we’ve done our job and the problem is, with the 2 percent property tax cap, the state hasn’t done its job. It hasn’t reduced unfunded mandates. We all got behind the tax cap. We rolled up our sleeves, worked together, and made difficult decisions. But the mandates are still piling up. Decisions are being made at the Capitol that impact counties, but no one is asking us how this will impact county budgets, no one is sitting down with us to come up with solutions.”
Charles H. Nesbitt Jr., NYSAC President and Orleans County Chief Administrative Officer said, “County officials are doing everything we can to control local spending. We have reduced our workforce, implemented enhanced shared service programs, consolidated departments and programs, and cut services. However, we cannot achieve any success with continued state interference in local home rule affairs. The Governor’s proposed cost shifts, mandates, and cuts will actually consume more than any anticipated new sales tax revenue. It’s a shell game and business as usual.”
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said, “We have cut the property tax rate for the last seven years in Onondaga County in the last seven years, and during this same period of time we have had to make a lot of hard decisions. But the only reason that we have been able to do that is because of our sales tax. So now there is a proposal to finally return some of the revenue that we have lost to Internet transactions so we can fund our programs and we can fund these mandates. But the state, instead of taking their piece of the revenue to fund the AIM program is saying to the counties, you’ve got to use yours to pay the towns and villages. This proposal should be defeated and the state should properly reinvest in local governments through revenue sharing.”
The New York State Association of Counties is a bipartisan municipal association serving all 62 counties of New York State including the City of New York.
Organized in 1925, NYSAC’s mission is to represent, educate, serve and advocate for member counties and the thousands of elected and appointed county officials who serve the public.
For more information, visit www.nysac.org
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