It was not a good week for New York’s cities and counties.
On Monday, Rockland County sent a delegation to Albany to ask for the authority to close its widening budget deficit by issuing bonds backed by a sales tax increase.
On Tuesday, Suffolk County, one of the largest counties outside New York City, projected a $530 million deficit over a three-year period and declared a financial emergency. Its Long Island neighbor, Nassau County, is already so troubled that a state oversight board seized control of its finances last year.
California is also in a financial mess, as all of us Californians know. For instance, Governor Jerry Brown has seized all of our redevelopment funds and has forced us to shut down our redevelopment agencies……thereby assuring the stagnation of our local efforts at improving our communities and business opportunities, and stifling growth in the job market. Meanwhile, we continue to pay our retiring state legislators a pension identical to the amount of pay they earn while in office, as required by law. Where’s the fairness in this, one might ask?
Obama’s p.r. machine says everything’s just peachy, just peachy. If you’ve noticed, they’re revving up the government disinformation office into high gear. Just tune into NPR or any of the mainline media that are telling the news like they are pretending it is. Fact is though they can’t cover up the rot any longer.
I grew up in Rockland county. There are several interesting items the article did not mention. There is a very large Hasidic population and many residential dwellings are classified as synagogues, taking them off the property tax roles. Also, where I went to high school, the average salary for a teacher is closing in on $100K, with the full suite of union benefits and pension. Is it any wonder the county economy is collapsing? As an aside, those who do pay property taxes on their houses cannot afford them any more. Since you get a separate tax bill from the county and then from your local school district, the total bill for my friend’s retired father, living in a circa 1950 modest ranch house with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths hit the $14,000 mark three years ago and forced him to sell – to a group that razed the property and built a Hasidic Yeshiva for girls, taking another property off the tax rolls.
#3,The problem isn’t lack of revenue. The problem is over spending. No politician will ever cut any program no matter how pointless, worthless or out of touch it may be.
Some apples and oranges get mixed up in this article. The problems upstate don’t really have any relation to what ails downstate. The only thing in common is the city everyone has to go to when they want something… well, the city where the political leaders have their offices… wait, how many capitals does New York State have?