For the past couple years, Albany County Legislators have been talking about keeping a much larger share of sales tax revenue for their own purposes and reducing the share passed on to cities, towns and villages. Many of those Legislators have such a proprietary sense of it that they call it “our money,” as if they earned it or something. The County Executive, Dan McCoy still wants a bigger share. However, because they dare not cause a ruckus, it now appears that the desire of multiple legislators for higher office (including some who’ve argued for keeping a bigger share) has frozen things as they currently are … at least for this year.
Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, reports in Share shift a likely no go that it’s unlikely to happen this year.
McCoy still wants the money because once again, Albany County is anticipating a large property tax increase.
In late March, McCoy publicly floated the idea of capping the amount of sales tax revenue the county shares with its cities and towns at 2010 levels, with the county keeping any growth beyond that to help pay for unfunded state mandates that he said are all but certain to force the county to exceed the state’s property tax cap again next year.
The idea, and other variations of it, however, has been wildly unpopular with local leaders, who say they rely on the money to balance their budgets as much as the county does.
One wonders whether McCoy was willing to guarantee local officials the 2010 level so that if revenues fell, he and the County would bear the full cost of the downside.
Of course, if the County keeps a larger share, then cities, towns and villages would likely have to raise their taxes even higher. This would never have saved taxpayers anything; it would have just changed the names of the elected officials who anger voters.
But there are now so many legislators running for the State Legislature and because they don’t have to deal with the County budget until after the election, that they’ve backed off the issue. Perhaps “fled from the issue” is a better description.
While legislature Chairman Shawn Morse said the Democrats did not discuss McCoy’s cap proposal specifically, he said any move that shifts the tax burden from the county to cities and towns is little different than the unfunded state mandated programs the county is battling. “I don’t think there’s a lot of steam for that moving forward,” said Morse, a Cohoes Democrat who launched his campaign for state Senate this month attacking unfunded mandates. “I think the lawmakers have always been very concerned about just shifting the burden. That’s where I’ve been on this thing since day one. I complain about unfunded mandates, and this would be no different.”
In Morse’s case, that rings of revisionist history. Others were more candid.
Majority Leader Frank Commisso was more direct. “There was no support for it,” Commisso, who represents Albany and is running for Assembly, said of changing the distribution formula. “We have to find other ways of tightening our budget.”
But this election season will end and perhaps some of these characters will move on to other jobs. The issue, and the cumulative effect of not dealing with the underlying financial challenges will remain. So expect this issue to be back next year. And when that happens, come back here to look at all the relevant data.
Albany County distributes 40 percent of of what it receives in sales tax revenues to municipalities and that’s the figure that the Legislature has obsessed over. The figures they’ve ignored are ones that show how Albany County gets an unusually high level of sales tax revenue. So the net that remains for the County is still high. Take a look at the attached graphic which shows trend lines for Albany and comparable counties of sales tax revenues per capita after distributions to municipalities. We compared Albany to Broome, Dutchess, Erie, Monroe, Niagara, Oneida, Onondaga, and Orange Counties. These are all upstate New York metropolitan counties, each with some rural areas mixed in.
Sales Tax Revenues per Capita – Upstate Metropolitan Counties – Net of Distributions to Municipalities.pdf
Even after distributions to cities, towns and villages, from 1998 through 2010, Albany County had the highest average per capita sales tax revenue per resident (as well as the highest year).
So even after the election, don’t restart the whining. Don’t try again to pass the burden to somebody else. Clean up your own house.
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Albany County,
Data,
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Use the Damn Data
