“Saying local governments do not want to cut costs, Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday proposed forcing them to put efficiency plans on the ballot in November for voters to decide.” – Elmira Star-Gazette.
Chemung County Legislator Rodney J. Strange says the governor has only to look at Chemung County for fiscal efficiency.
“The County Executive and County Legislature have worked hard over the past decade to keep the county in a solid financial state. It is through the County Executive with the support of the Legislature that we have not raised taxes for 12 consecutive years. We have lead the state in shared service initiatives within our county and have saved municipalities hundreds of thousands of dollars by doing so. In 2013 the legislature passed the “Chemung County Financial Restructuring Plan” which reduced payroll by 30 full time jobs, changed benefits and pay structure with our employees and unions, created a new economic development strategy and implemented additional changes in county programming that saved $750,000. We have done all this and kept our county fiscally sound,” Strange said.
“The biggest fiscal crisis facing us as a county is the state’s unfunded mandates. In 2017, every penny of the $29,146,582.00 that we collect in property taxes will go directly to the state. Another $8,946,028.00 or 22% of our local sales tax must also go to the state to pay for their unfunded mandates that we as a county have absolutely NO say in. 67% or $19,487,288.00 of our local tax levy goes to fund Medicaid. No other state in the country makes their counties pay Medicaid costs. If we didn’t have these unfunded mandates, we would have no property tax at all. We would have the additional 8.9 million of sales tax revenue to spend on local needs as well,” Strange said.
Strange says he will continue to make mandate relief and a total state takeover of those mandates a top priority.