Medicaid and pension contributions are strangling county budgets to the point where something has got to give in state government, according to the elected leaders of Westchester, Putnam and Rockland counties.
Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino said the majority of property tax dollars collected in the county are used to pay those contributions and other state government mandates.
“For all intents and purposes, it”™s become a state property tax,” Astorino said at the Suffern Crowne Plaza on Friday. Astorino, a Republican running for governor this year, was one of three county executives at an event hosted by the Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress, a Newburgh-based business and academic advocacy nonprofit.
Astorino said in Westchester, 85 cents of each property tax dollar collected went toward mandates. For example, the county”™s pension bills shot up from $3 million in 2002 to an expected $101 million this year, he said. Very little of the tax dollars collected and sent to Albany are ever returned to Westchester in aid or infrastructure repairs, Astorino said.
“For every dollar they send us, they charge us two,” he said. Astorino said the mandates, combined with the state”™s property tax levy cap, make an impossible equation and force counties to either raise taxes or impose layoffs.
“The third option is you”™ve got to change the rules,” he said. Perhaps highlighting a campaign platform, Astorino said he didn”™t think that option was being investigated. “The more we scream, the deafer they become in Albany,” he said.
Putnam County Executive Mary Ellen Odell said part of the issue with Medicaid is rampant, unchecked abuse of the system. Odell, a Republican, said she had witnessed a situation in Putnam where someone that owned a new car and a modest home still collected from Medicaid, which is intended as a health care benefit for low-income individuals.
“Fraud is a tremendous burden on all of our communities,” she said. Odell said the county had contracted a consultant to help it navigate the complexities of Medicaid and save Putnam taxpayer dollars.
The cost of Medicaid has risen to more than $55 billion a year in the state, more than Texas and Pennsylvania combined. Counties are on the hook for roughly 16 percent of that total. A report from the New York Citizen”™s Budget Commission in 2011 showed that New York”™s approach to funding Medicaid, which relied heavily on less-affluent counties and not proportionately on local governments, was out of line with other states. At that time, New Hampshire localities had the second-highest percentage of contribution, at 8 percent, significantly less than what New York counties were paying.
That report suggested the burden for Medicaid be absorbed back to New York government and not its counties. “The state should assume responsibility for the local share liability over a period of four or five years,” the report said. “This phase-in period would align with the state takeover of administrative responsibility for the program and with full implementation of federal health care reform.”
Statewide enrollment grew 80 percent from 2000 to 2012, according to the New York City Independent Budget Office, and there are now more than 5 million recipients in the state. Over the years, New York City”™s contributions to the cost have decreased but city residents receive 62 percent of the Medicaid benefits in the state. The average cost per enrollee is roughly $9,000, down from several years ago.
Ed Day, the Rockland County executive, joined his colleagues in pointing the finger at Albany. He mentioned a proposed early-voting law that he said would have required Rockland to up property taxes 2 percent to fund. He said if the state wanted to give mandates, then it should offer funding for them.
“If you want to run it, you got to own it,” Day said.
