After fighting for years to protect its employees”™ jobs in the face of escalating mandate costs, the city of Peekskill last week issued pink slips to 31 full-time employees, and will likely lay off another nine part-time workers in the coming weeks.
“Now, that may sound small, but for us it”™s a 15 percent workforce reduction,” said Mayor Mary Foster at an Oct. 2 meeting in Bedford, adding that the layoffs come after the city has already cut its workforce by about 10 percent over the last six years through attrition.
The culprit? Rising pension costs, Foster said, which will amount to $5 million next year, or nearly 15 percent of the city”™s $35 million budget.
“The only way you cut your pension bill is you cut your people,” she said.
Foster, along with representatives from the state Assembly, county government and the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, made a plea for businesses, advocacy groups and residents to increase the pressure on the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo to adopt measures that would reduce the burden of mandates ”“ such as pension and Medicaid contributions ”“ on counties and municipalities.
The group spoke at a forum hosted at Fox Lane Middle School by the group Best4NY, short for Better Education and Smarter Taxation for New York.
State Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb of Canandaigua said legislators would not feel compelled to authorize mandate relief measures without the governor”™s leadership.
“We”™ve talked to a variety of different groups ”“ the New York State Association of Counties, we”™ve talked to NFIB (National Federation of Independent Business), Unshackle Upstate, New York State Business Council, the school superintendents, the school boards association ”“ and what I”™ve said to them repeatedly is, you have to ratchet up the dialogue on mandate relief, with your legislators but equally if not more importantly with the governor,” Kolb said.
Both The Business Council of Westchester and the Westchester County Association have said repeatedly over the past year that mandate relief is among their top legislative priorities.
With billions of dollars in Medicaid waste, fraud and abuse annually, and a Medicaid bill in New York state that tops those of Texas and Florida combined, Kolb said it is crucial for voters to hold state officials accountable.
“Anything that drives up the cost of doing business in New York drives people away,” he said.
County and municipal governments are required under state law to pay a portion of the costs of various programs and services, including Medicaid, the state pension system, employee health care benefits and other social services.
Since enacting a 2 percent cap on annual property tax levy increases in the summer of 2011, the state government has largely failed to adopt measures that would shield localities from increases in the costs of those unfunded mandates, said George Oros, chief of staff to Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino.
“When he (Astorino) proposes a budget with layoffs, when we do away with the curators we used to have at some of our museums, when we have to maybe cancel a bus route, the reason is not because we”™re mean,” Oros said. “It”™s not because we don”™t want to deliver the services; it”™s because we cannot, in this county, continue to raise property taxes, number one, and number two, we have no choice but to take care of these mandates and pay the bills that are sent to us by law.”
This year, 82 cents of every dollar in property taxes collected by the county government went directly to state mandated programs, Oros said, adding that the cost of those mandates will increase by $40 million in 2013.
“Westchester County property taxes are $548 million, so at a 2 percent cap we could raise property taxes $11 million next year,” Oros said, noting that Astorino has vowed not to raise taxes. “So we start out with a huge hole before we do anything else.”
Lisa Davis, executive director of the Westchester-Putnam School Boards Association, said the problem often isn”™t the mandate itself ”“ it”™s that they are not paid for by the state government.
“Every mandate is well-intentioned, but they cost money,” she said, adding that school budgets are currently stretched to their limits.
