 
Despite the hoopla and outcry from local chambers of commerce throughout the Hudson Valley, many family-owned businesses with small payrolls don”™t know the MTA is coming their way.
“What mobility”™ tax?” asked Jim and Linda Jones, owners of A Perfect Pool in the Orange County town of Chester. The couple, who own a landscaping business in addition to their pool company, work side by side, getting hands equally dirty between raindrops through the months of May and June.
They, like many small mom-and-pop businesses that employ one or two other workers, don”™t”™ know the new mobility tax imposed by the MTA is going to affect their business.Â
“We don”™t use the train,” said Jim Jones, whose family has been in the Hudson Valley more than four generations and relied on horses and buggies before the automobile was introduced. Trains? Not part of the equation. But the family, like many others, will be paying 34 cents on every hundred dollars of payroll, even if payroll consists of one or two employees during their busy season, which has been hit especially hard because of the weather.
Neither do others seem to know of the tax. Rockland, Dutchess and Putnam counties, which, along with Orange, are the so-called “quarter-pounders” (they share one-quarter of one vote on the MTA board) will see little, if any, benefit from being taxed the same amount as New York City residents who ride mass transit regularly.
Originally, Richard Ravitch, recently named to fill the vacancy as lieutenant governor, and the MTA commission had considered charging outlying counties 25 cents on every hundred dollars ”“ then decided each of the 12 counties where the MTA provides services ”“ even a fraction thereof ”“ will pay the same amount.Â
Since then, chambers have been urging members and nonmembers alike to bombard the governor and Albany with letters protesting the tax, which “is just plain disgusting,” said Charles North, president of the Dutchess County Regional Chamber of Commerce. No one, save the school districts, are exempt, and even they must pay, with the promise of reimbursement. There is no “sunset” on the MTA”™s new tax, another sore spot for the four counties. Ulster is not affected, since it does not receive MTA service.
Dutchess Stadium”™s two TEA (Taxed Enough Already) rallies and proposals from three of the four counties to withdraw from the MTA have had zero effect on the new tax, which is retroactive to March 1.
“I didn”™t even realize we were part of any MTA tax,” said Linda Jones, who does the bookkeeping for the family”™s business. “When I received a letter from the MTA, I put it aside. I didn”™t even realize it had anything to do with us.”
The Joneses, like many other small businesses, are going to feel the added pinch at a time when they can least afford it. Their business is seasonal and the season has not been kind to many who rely on customers who want landscaping or pools, or to small farms whose fresh fruits and vegetables have washed away.Â
The owners of the businesses that can afford it least will feel it the most, said Joyce Minard, president of New Paltz”™s Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Jason Balletta, president of Bee Alive in Valley Cottage in Rockland county, said it is definitely going to hurt small businesses like his own. His company, featured in the July 13 issue of HVBiz, has 100 employees. “Where does Albany think we are going to find the money to expand or do anything for the employees we now have? I still haven”™t been able to absorb the rationale.”
RBA president Al Samuels said that Rockland, which initially threatened to pull out of the MTA and try to negotiate directly with NJ Transit, which leases its service to the MTA to provide service to the smallest county in the state, decided to stay in the MTA pool, but continue to fight the retroactive charges and continue to lobby Albany to excuse the “quarter pounder” counties from the mobility tax. “The bottom line is, if we try to pull out, it will end up in the courts, and the Legislature and County Executive Scott Vanderhoef aren”™t going to spend taxpayer dollars to fight the MTA,” said Samuels. “The best we can do is put pressure on them to be reasonable. Nearly 100 percent of people who live in Rockland drive to work.”Â
For businesses that don”™t know they are also included in paying the mobility tax, it could be a business ender. “In these troubled economic times, adding another tax to the highest- taxed state in the country is just one more reason for people to look on the other side of the border,” said Peter Bardunias, president of the Putnam-Mahopac Chamber of Commerce. “We have a hard enough time making New York a desirable choice for businesses to expand or relocate to. This is just the icing on a rotten cake.”
