I would like to clear up some of the confusion, much of it caused by local elected officials, regarding sales tax and the sharing of Putnam County funds with the towns and villages.
Robert Kearns of the Carmel Town Council confidently stated that the county was sending $5.3 million back to New York State. That is ridiculous, and I’m shocked no one on the board stood up to correct it. There is no money going back to the state. The intent is to cut the sales tax and save residents $5.3 million on their purchases.
Cold Spring Mayor Kathleen Foley attended a legislative meeting and lectured us about how sharing surplus funds would have a large impact on her municipal budget. The problem was that she, as the chief fiscal officer for the village, misrepresented her budget amount by 30 percent. She has no idea what her budget is and is telling the Legislature that it is acting irresponsibly.
Putnam Valley Supervisor Jacqueline Annabi, the mouthpiece for the mayors and supervisors, behaved unprofessionally at our meetings. She is demanding that we increase sales tax to support initiatives in her town, which is the responsibility of the supervisor and her board. She seems to have forgotten the help the Legislature gave Putnam Valley by finishing the Peekskill Hollow Road Bridge.
The Legislature passed a sales-tax reduction bill, by a 5-4 vote, that lowered the sales tax by a quarter percent. This was vetoed by County Executive Kevin Byrne, who held a news conference with a sign that read “Tax Relief — Where it Matters.” Only in this bizarre administration can vetoing a sales-tax cut be called tax relief.
It puzzles me that the county executive has a newfound interest in sharing sales tax with the towns and villages. There was no mention of it in last year’s disastrous budget process. There was no mention of it in his State of the County address. At the start of the process to keep the sales tax at 4 percent rather than 3 percent, Byrne indicated there was a dire need to collect the entire 1 percent. Now he’s rounded up the supervisors and mayors to play a political game. They have held meetings with state and local officials and not invited a key player in the decision-making process: the legislative chair. Why the secrecy?
The county executive went so far as to conduct an online survey on what we should do with your money. This statistically useless exercise is the equivalent to an Albany “push poll’ that directs the result in a desired direction. I voted five times and kept waiting for it to stop me. The desired results were sales-tax reduction is bad; property-tax reduction is good. For the record, this proposed “historic tax relief” for a home assessed at $500,000 would be $25 annually.
If the county executive is capable of this chicanery and trickery, what’s next? What future issues will he try to manipulate? This is a betrayal of public trust.
The reason I support a quarter-point reduction is because the county has a fund balance of $140 million and an unassigned fund balance of $90 million. Our property tax levy is $46 million. We could eliminate 100 percent of property tax for two years if we thought that was prudent. (I’m not advocating that.)
Sales tax is collected on every phone bill, electric bill, gasoline purchase, restaurant bill, retail purchases, car purchase, etc. Over the past five years we have had a dramatic increase in sales-tax revenue because of the Wayfair litigation decided in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which struck down the requirement that a vendor must have a “physical presence” in a state to be subject to sales tax. We have also had significant inflation, so now you’re paying more tax because the cost of goods is higher. This is tantamount to double taxation.
I’m proud that during my two years as legislative chair, we reduced the property tax levy by $500,000 and held it for a second year. We need to continue to lower taxes while we have an obscene amount of your money sitting in our treasury.
With a $90 million surplus, the Legislature can afford to lower sales tax by a quarter of a point ($5 million), offer the surplus to the towns and villages ($5 million) and reduce property taxes next year by at least $2 million. That would be a meaningful and tangible benefit for our residents.
The debate over sales tax sharing has been raging in Putnam County for decades. What no one, including Legislator Jonke, ever talks about is just how much we get for our county taxes and what a total bargain they are. The mandates and services that are covered in the county budget would bankrupt the towns if they had to deal with them on their own.
Because most of the money comes from sales tax, not property tax, our county tax bill is the lowest one that we receive. (For example, the mill rate per $1,000 for the county is $2.34, while Putnam Valley is $3.75 and the school district is $20.08.)
After seeing the way that money is wasted by the towns and the lack of transparency and accountability, there is no way that these supervisors should be given more money to play with. They are like kids in a candy store: They want more, more, more, no matter how much you give them.
County Executive Kevin Byrne and other Putnam officials are doing a great job keeping property taxes low, and I trust them way more than I would trust my own Town Board to do so. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?