VOICING OPPOSITION
County, state officials voice opposition to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s AIM funding cuts
“Quite frankly, it’s outrageous, all of this is done after the towns and counties and cities have done their budgets. It’s a huge sucker punch to us.” — Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin
RENSSELAER COUNTY, N.Y. >> Gov. Andrew Cuomo is facing criticism from the state legislature and leaders of counties, towns, and villages across the state in the wake of a cut in AIM funding from the budget.
Allocated based on population and receiving less than two percent as their overall budget, would be impacted most by the cuts.
Hence, towns and villages within Rensselaer County are the municipalities that would be feeling the crunch the most, as the governor looks to account for a $2.3 billion budget shortfall.
“It’s an attack on the counties as [the governor] shafted the towns and villages in his budget. Keep in mind this is at the exact same time that he’s raising pay for prisoners, giving free college to illegals, going to cut our Medicaid reimbursement rates. He’s declaring war on the counties, and he’s creating a civil war between the counties and the towns and villages,” Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin said of the hit to local municipalities.
The impact could also see those same municipalities scrambling to re-adjust their budgets, along with the potential of a shifted burden onto taxpayers.
“Quite frankly, it’s outrageous, all of this is done after the towns and counties and cities have done their budgets. It’s a huge sucker punch to us; we balance our budget, we do everything we can to save money and then [the governor] just hands us a bill that he’s unwilling to pay and that bill, by the way,
is $593,347. So that’s about $600,000 that [the governor] wants the county to absorb because of the lack of planning and ability to run the fiscal ship in Albany. It is outrageous, and it is clearly another unfunded mandat e,” McLaughlin added of being tabbed to pick up the cost at the county level.
Assemblyman Jake Ashby, R- Castleton, also echoed those concerns of an unfair and unfunded mandate being passed to the local level.
“I think that the response that the governor had with this really isn’t a solution to it. He’s again putting an unfunded mandate back down onto the counties and ask- ing them to come up with the difference. It should be to nobody’s surprise that he’s trying to pull something like this. It’s not really the time, not that there’s ever a time, to be doing something like this, but the state is already in some serious financial trouble and again we’re seeing the same old tact of asking the counties to pay more than their fair share on this and it’s very discouraging and disheartening,” Ashby said.
Also concerned with how municipalities will have to deal with making up for the gap in funding is Assemblyman John McDonald III, DCohoes.
“Obviously, as a former mayor and one who also represents three communities within my district, but many communities throughout the state, I’m very concerned about the impact of the cuts. Just alone, North Greenbush, Waterford, and Green Island would see some significant reductions in aid which although they don’t make up a large part of their budget, they are still critical parts of their budget when you look at the totality of the budget,” McDonald III said.
In order to attempt to make up the cut, Cuomo recently proposed using revenue from internet sales tax, which has yet to be officially passed into law in the state.
“There’s been no increase in aid to local governments for over 11 years now, whereas other entities, particularly education has rightfully seen increases in aid. We just think it’s patently unfair. The governor came out with an amendment this past Friday that looks to expedite the collec- tions of the internet sales tax with the thinking being that that may help offset the proposed cut in aid because even by the governor’s own admission, he didn’t realize what impact this would have or the outrage that would happen, which I’m glad that he recognized that,” said McDonald.
“I’m still a little bit concerned about the process, it’s one thing to say we’re going to expedite the sales tax process by three months and technically that’s going to yield $60 million, which should cover the $47 million in AIM cuts and also the $7 million in early voting but the reality is there’s no guarantee,” added McDonald. “The other concern I have with the proposal by the governor basically is he’s putting that responsibility on the counties to ad- dress this issue.
“This is really something where the state should be addressing the issue directly. To put the counties in the position where they’re going to potentially aggravate a relationship with their towns, cities or villages, I have great concerns with that. We want local governments to share services; we don’t want to start civil wars and cause friction.”
McLaughlin also added how the state should be addressing the funding and not leave it to municipalities to fight amongst themselves for dollars.
“It’s [state] aid to municipalities; it’s not county aid to municipalities, so we already share our tax revenue with the towns and villages, we already do that, we have revenue sharing agreements with them, to begin with,” said McLaughlin.
With fiscal issues at the state level during a solid economy nationally, McDonald echoed the concern of McLaughlin as to what happens should the economy hit a recession.
“Let’s be clear, the economy has been exceptional the past several years and that’s really helped local governments, but there’s no guarantee that’s going to continue to happen. If some people think that this is extra money that they can play with, I beg to differ. I think local governments are good stewards of the money; they are the representatives most closest to the public and I know being a former mayor, the last thing, a local government official wants to do is raise taxes because another mandate’s been passed down,” McDonald said.