The Westchester County Board of Legislators last week adopted a $1.77 billion budget for 2008, up from $1.69 billion in 2007.
The budget includes a property tax levy increase of 3.89 percent, down from the 4.7 percent levy increase proposed in County Executive Andrew Spano”™s budget.
Legislature Republicans, however, argued that the budget could have been pared further.
The budget now goes back to Spano, who can veto Legislature changes.
Legislators cut about $9 million from Spano”™s budget, which produced the reduction in the tax levy.
Among the cuts were four new staff positions proposed in Spano”™s budget and a reduction in liability costs by nearly $1 million.
But Dec. 6, four days before the budget was adopted, Minority Leader George Oros, R-Cortlandt, unveiled a budget proposal that he said would have produced a 0.0 percent tax increase. After the budget was passed, Oros said legislators could have adopted many of the minority”™s proposed budget cuts. Among the further cuts proposed by the Republican minority were eliminating the county tax commission, which would save around $375,000, and eliminating vacancies and some new positions in the Law and Social Services departments, which Oros said could have saved more than $1 million.
While presenting the minority”™s budget proposal before the final budget passed, Oros railed against the size of county government and the increase in the number of its employees, which he said is unnecessary.
He said the county government had expanded by 300 jobs over the last three years, or 8 percent, claiming the county could run just as efficiently without many of these jobs having been added.
“We have to stop feeding the monster of county government,” he said at the time.
The 2008 budget amounts to a 4.15 percent increase in spending over last year’s budget. The cost of state-mandated services provided by the Department of Social Services accounts for the bulk of this increase, according to legislators.
“We held the increase in the property tax levy to a low 3.89 percent despite a projected decrease in the rate of growth of sales tax revenues and a dramatic increase in the social services budget to cover the cost of over 1,400 new child protective cases,” said County Board Chairman Bill Ryan in a prepared statement.
The board postponed until this week a decision on a set of pay raises for certain county officials. That proposal has been criticized by several groups including the League of Women Voters.
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