Showing bipartisan unity, state and county lawmakers joined in White Plains recently to support a state bill that would relieve Westchester County and property owners of the county”™s share of Medicaid program costs. They said the relief measure is an essential companion to the state”™s 2-percent cap on local real property taxes that takes effect in 2012.
Getting a three-month jump on the start of their next session in Albany, Assembly and Senate sponsors of the bill are traveling to county seats across New York to enlist local support for their plan to phase out counties”™ mandated 50-percent share of the state”™s Medicaid costs over eight years. New York”™s 62 counties this year levied more than $7.3 billion in property taxes to cover their share of Medicaid costs, according to the New York Association of Counties (NYSAC), and that figure is projected to rise to $10 billion by 2025.
Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-88th District, the bill”™s Assembly sponsor from Scarsdale, said the measure is “the most important initiative we can accomplish for local taxpayers” when lawmakers return to work on Jan. 1. She said the shifted costs ”“ about $255 million in 2012 alone ”“ will be covered by the revenue-pinched state through savings realized by Gov. Cuomo”™s Medicaid Redesign Team and by federal funds generated by provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Westchester County”™s $211-million Medicaid payment to the state in 2011 amounts to 39 percent of the county property tax levy. Without the state takeover of counties”™ Medicaid costs, Westchester”™s share in 10 years will account for 49 percent of the county tax levy.
With counties now required to pay an additional 3 percent annually for the Medicaid program, Westchester would have to additionally raise approximately $6 million in taxes for Medicaid in 2012, when the county will be limited by the new tax cap to a total tax levy increase of $10 million, said Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti, D-92nd District, a former Westchester County legislator.
The bipartisan bill, though, would freeze county payments at 2011 levels, a statewide savings of $180 million for counties. The gradual phase-out would begin in the fourth quarter of 2012 with a 5 percent reduction for counties, a $75 million savings statewide. The gradual decreases would continue to 2019.
“This is the mother of all unfunded mandates,” Westchester County Legislator James Maisano, the board”™s Republican minority leader, said at the Oct. 3 press conference. “The time has come that county governments should stop being used as an ATM machine by the state of New York.”
County Legislator William J. Ryan, immediate past president of NYSAC, said Medicaid is first among the nine largest state-mandated programs that account for 90 percent of local property taxes. Outside New York City, those costs make up $4 billion of the total $4.4 billion in taxes levied by 57 counties. Medicaid accounts for one-half of those mandated costs, he said.
“If our goal in this state is property tax relief, then the discussion has to begin and end with the nine state mandates that are putting just awesome, just tremendous pressure on property taxpayers,” said Ryan.
Westchester County Executive Robert P. Astorino in a statement called the Medicaid bill “an important first step toward relieving local governments from unfunded mandates that have contributed to sharp increases in property taxes over the past decade.” A state takeover of Medicaid costs would “dramatically reduce the property tax burden” in Westchester, where commercial and residential property owners again this year are saddled with the highest property taxes in the nation, he said.
