Heeding the recent message from voters at the polls, outgoing Westchester County Executive Andrew J. Spano today proposed a 2010 county budget that calls for employee furloughs and other cost-cutting measures and leaves decisions on executive staffing and added funding for those posts to his victorious election opponent.
Despite the spending cuts, the approximately $1.82 billion budget would require a 4.9 percent increase in the tax levy. Spano said the tax hike is needed to offset a projected $50.9 million drop in revenue, including an estimated $45.6 million shortfall in anticipated sales taxes budgeted this year, and a $70.2 million increase in county expenses, including $37.6 million in added pension and employee health insurance costs.
Spano said the tax increase would add an average of $100 to homeowners”™ bills, though the increase would vary by municipality according to property tax equalization rates.
He said the incoming county executive, Rob Astorino, was not consulted in the executive budgetmaking after his Republican challenger”™s upset victory this month. The budget, however, cuts some spending for which Astorino criticized the three-term Democrat in the campaign, including the county executive”™s three-officer security detail and his official car.
“It”™s less to do with him (Astorino) than it has to do with the message that I thought I got in the campaign” from voters. “I got my butt whipped on certain issues”¦This budget reflects that.”
Spano proposed to save $5.5 million next year by requiring most county employees to take an unpaid five-day work furlough. Furloughed employees, however, would receive deferred payments for those days when they retire from or leave county employment, he said.
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The furlough would not apply to public safety and correction workers, criminal investigators, elected officials and Board of Legislators staff. Spano said he was barred by law from ordering the furlough for elected officials, but urged legislators to impose the furloughs on their staffs, too.
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Spano said he would meet this afternoon with union officials about the furlough for union members. “I have no reason to think they will not” go along with the proposal, he said.
The executive budget includes only one-month funding for nine senior-level posts in the county executive”™s office and five deputy commissioners, at a $1.5 million saving, though those job titles will remain in the budget. Spano said that will allow staff structure and size to be decided by Astorino, who will have to seek any additional funding from legislators.
“The one thing that”™s very clear to me is that I will not be negotiating this with the Board of Legislators,” Spano said in a rare moment of levity at his morning press conference.
Spano said he will legally retire and begin collecting his government pension when he leaves office in January. As for his future, “I”™m going to take my time and look around. I want to do something interesting that has the flavor of the kinds of things that are done in government but are not necessarily in government.”
Westchester”™s long-time chief executive was applauded by members of the press as he left the room.
