While businesses and residents across the state applauded the 2 percent property tax cap enacted by the Legislature in June, a newly formed advocacy group called Best4NY says it does not go far enough.
The group began in early 2011 as an occasional meeting of business professionals living in several Westchester communities who were united by their shared concerns over increased state spending on Medicaid, pensions for state employees and other so-called mandates.
Among the group”™s primary goals are to increase awareness of the need for mandate relief and to bring about reforms that shift the tax burden from local and county governments back to the state level, said J. Howland Robinson of Bedford, a New York City attorney and one of Best4NY”™s co-founders.
“Our main focus is better education and smarter taxation,” he said.
Without substantial mandate relief included in the cap, budgeting has become increasingly difficult for municipalities as they struggle to stay under the 2 percent level while still maintaining all essential services, Robinson said.
“To stay within 2- or 3 percent is going to be virtually impossible without drastically cutting everything else,” he said, due to increases in salaries, health care benefits and pension plans for government employees that are guaranteed.
He said that as those personnel costs grow, it will force governments to either make across-the-board cuts or to override the tax cap, as the Bedford Town Board did in late September.
“People aren”™t thinking enough about what”™s going to happen three, four, five years down the road.”
Robinson said Best4NY was fully supportive of a bipartisan proposal in the state Assembly that would shift the burden of paying for Medicaid from the county government level up to the state level.
“If you took all the statewide mandate spending and put it back into Albany where it should be,” taxpayers would have a much clearer understanding of how and where their tax dollars were being spent, he said.
Later this month, representatives of Best4NY plan to meet with Westchester County Association President William Mooney to discuss common goals. The WCA last week announced its involvement with a statewide coalition of advocacy groups in a new campaign, “Let New York Work,” aimed specifically at providing mandate relief.
Information on Best4NY can be found at: http://best4ny.org.
