Is Gov. Cuomo passing the buck on property taxes?
The trickle of local governments in the North Country contemplating an override of the 2 percent property tax cap has exploded into an Irene-scale flood.
Essex, Franklin and St. Lawrence Counties are all moving toward an override. Massena has already voted to pull the plug.
The cap was one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signature accomplishments and is still viewed with favor by most New Yorkers.
But local government leaders saddled with paying for big ticket items that the state requires say they just don’t have a choice.
Pension costs are rising. So are Medicaid costs.
Facing his own budget pressures, and constrained by his promise not to raise income taxes, the governor has resisted absorbing any more of those expenses onto his own balance sheet.
(He recently flat-out rejected the notion of the state taking over the business of paying for big-ticket Medicaid programs.)
Complicating things further is the fact that the tax cap ran smack into a wave of natural disasters, including Irene, as well as a lingering downturn in the economy.
Those are real-world events — not examples of profligate spending — and they’ve squeezed many towns, counties, and school districts.
Meanwhile, mandate reform in Albany seems to have stalled. Talk of moving forward with any kind of serious scale-back in the demands placed on local governments and school districts has faded to a mutter.
But a different kind of mutter is growing louder.
The strategy of passing a tax cap first, without enacting significant mandate reform, is the target of growing ire from people across the political spectrum.
Massena councilman John Macaulay told NCPR that his city didn’t have a choice.
“Most of us on the board feel the state didn’t think clearly through this. You can put a cap in place and if you don’t change the mandated things you have to pay all you’ve done is put all the political pressure on the local governments and taken it off yourself at the state level.”
It’s not my place to express an opinion about this, but I do think it’s time for Governor Cuomo to speak at length to these questions:
Was a 2% property tax cap really a workable policy, given the demands placed on local governments by state officials? What will it mean if dozens or hundreds of local governments simply override the rule?
And if higher taxes aren’t the answer, what services (that’s what mandates boil down to: government services) should we begin cutting?
This looked initially like a huge win for the governor. But if he’s not careful, it could begin to look more like a job left half unfinished.
So what do you think? Are local governments moving too fast to hike taxes, or has the state put them in an untenable position?
There also exists the possibility that Lewis County may override the cap as well. They have an estimated $5 million dollar budget gab for the next year at present and so over riding the cap in certainly on the table of possibilities.
I don’t view the cap as one of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signature accomplishments.
I view it as one of the reasons I will never again vote for him. It was craven politics at its worst. We should never elect former AG’s to the governorship. They all pretend to be better and holier then everyone.
A news update from the Town of Russell: the Town passed the local law permitting an override of the tax cap, per the advice of the NYS Association of Towns. The Town will actually come in under the tax cap and the Town Board knew this when they passed the local law that puts the machinery for an override in place. The Town is sending a message that we don’t need the State telling us how to create a tax levy that meets the needs of our town.
Another interesting wrinkle: the formula that computes the dollar figure for a property tax levy that falls under the “2% cap” includes a multiplier for the increase in the property value of entities that fall under the law. This multiplier is 1.01% for the Town of Russell. Then there is the additional added tax permitted for pension costs in excess of 2% above last year (they are going up by 25% in Russell in 2012!). So we end up with a 4% increase qualifying as a 2% increase under this law. How the heck do you explain that to a town’s citizens and not sound like you are trying to pull a fast one on the taxpayers?
The Town of Russell’s tentative tax levy increase for 2012 is 2.9% above 2011, well under the “2% cap”. We were lucky, no floods or other disasters.
Perhaps the cap is not so much passing the buck as trying to insulate the state from additional costs of off setting local property taxes through the star program.
I believe capital construction costs are also exempted from the cap, which will help with Irene costs. Mandate reform should be enacted, but many mandate reform proposals are opposed by public employee unions who wish to continue special benefits when in fact things like disciplinary proceedings, paid time off, prison staffing levls and retiree health care benefits should be negotiated at the local level. Also, local government officials need to be more aggressive in standing up to the unions and not just go forth and raise taxes to pay for increasing health care costs and pay raises.
Government – Federal, state, and local – need to base their spending on current tax levels. They need to prioritize their spending based on their “income”. And not assume they will get a raise. In simple terms, they need to think, plan, and budget just like the average household does. They have to make the decisions on what they can pay for with their “income” and what they have to put off to the future or do without. They also need to realize that the average household hasn’t seen raises in their pay for quite awhile and yet have seen costs for food, clothing, shelter, heating fuel and gas increase. We have all made budget decisions to deal with these increases on a fix income, so why cann’t the government?
Of course the state didn’t think it through. The main priority was for politician Cuomo to be able to brag about how he “kept your taxes low.”
MJB is missing the point. Thanks to state mandates, local and county governments do not have the anything resembling complete control over their income or their expenses. You’re blaming them for choices, not all of which they are the ones making.
The only honest and true tax cap is a spending cap.
A spending cap might be possible if there were also a cost cap.
How about no increases for the health insurance people. Not a dime more for electricity, gas, fuel oil, highways, ambulance and fire equipment. A zero increase in the price of anything!
As costs go up, budgets go up unless you start getting rid of things like let the bridges fall and the roads further deteriorate, eliminate fire, ambulance and the criminal justice system. Put all the lawyers and judges out of work. Issue guns to those that don’t have them. Wait! No need for that. We can steal what guns we need because the cops are gone.
This is beginning to sound like fun.
I am still surprised that we have not had a legal challenge to the state telling local taxpayers how much they can tax and spend.
I personally think it was an easy way out. He does have control over how much the state hands out to local governments, this is should be his lever, not telling local entities how to manage their affairs.
A spending cap does not mean ignoring the natural increase in costs related to inflation pressure. It does mean cutting back in areas where cuts can be made. The criminal justice system that Pete mentions is a perfect example. It is abused beyond belief. A defendant comes before the judge and claims to be indigent. In many cases that’s not true but the judge has been conditioned to err on the side of caution and “voila” he gets free representation. I don’t know how issuing free guns got into this conversation.
Bob, you really think that judges approving court appointed lawyers to indigent clients who aren’t indigent is a major source of local government’s year-to-year spending increases? Maybe the local governments should give you a line-item veto, and you could take care of the problem single handed.
Do you seriously think that local governments haven’t been trying to squeeze unnecessary expenditures out of their budgets for some time now?