Archive: News

Albany - New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman announced yesterday that Marc A. Eletz, 70, a resident of Boca Raton, Florida, was sentenced in Albany County Court to 5 months in jail, $200,000 in restitution and signed a confession of judgment in the amount of $74,920.16 for stealing $274,920.16 in New York State pension benefits.  Eletz previously pleaded guilty to the crime of Grand Larceny in the Third Degree, a class D felony, in September 2015.

"Mr. Eletz thought he could steal his mother's pension, but we exposed his theft and recovered nearly $275,000 for the retirement system," State Comptroller DiNapoli said. "I thank Attorney General Schneiderman for partnering with us to prosecute these crimes."

Good news for Lansing seniors: the Town Board will vote this month to raise income limits for seniors and people with disabilities to qualify for as much as 50% property tax exemption.  The Board voted unanimously in an emergency meeting Wednesday to set a public hearing in two weeks.  An emergency meeting was required to meet state requirements for passing the law in time for it to apply to the next tax cycle.

"The local law needs to be adopted and in place by March 1st," said Lansing Town Clerk Debbie Crandall.  "If seniors don't get their paperwork filed by March 1st they could lose their exemption.  So we wanted to make sure this is in place so that they will qualify for 2017 town and county taxes.  This will bring us up to the maximum, compared to other towns."

Lansing school officials responded Monday to accusations in a New York State Comptroller's audit and local reporting that it had collected too much tax money over a three year period.   District officials went on the offensive, defending their budget planning and spending against what they characterized as an impossible situation created by the State in which there is no accepted way of insuring against catastrophic revenue loss.  Teachers and administrators spoke Monday in support of budget decisions to keep more than the allowed 4% of actual expenditures.  District officials accused auditors of ignoring special circumstances imposed because of the ongoing uncertainty about the fate of the District's biggest taxpayer coupled with reductions in state aid.

"As long as we have no legal recourse to the liability presented by this $1.3 million PILOT payment, we will continue to ask our taxpayers if they trust us to hold onto the dollars we end the year with (through efficient operations) so that we can apply these dollars if and when we know the future of the power plant," reads the district's official response to the audit.  It adds, "In short, the Comptroller's analysis of budget variations fell short of anything that could be considered thorough.  Instead the audit makes sweeping generalizations, indicating that the budget-building process must be flawed, or worse, a calculated exaggeration of projected costs, which is simply not true."

	Note: Lansing School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso said Monday she had received a message that day from the Comptroller's office congratulating Lansing on not being in fiscal stress.

Eighty-two school districts have been designated as fiscally stressed under New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli's Fiscal Stress Monitoring System. The scores are based on the evaluation of 672 school districts with fiscal years ending on June 30, 2015.

This is the third year DiNapoli's office has assessed and scored the financial stability of school districts. The latest round of scoring designated eight school districts in "significant fiscal stress," 24 in "moderate fiscal stress" and 50 as "susceptible to fiscal stress." A total of 90 districts were listed in one of these three categories last year and 87 were listed in stress the year prior.

"The overall number of school districts in fiscal stress has essentially remained steady the past three years," said DiNapoli. "A few have remained in stress for the entire period and we're watching closely to see if the limited growth allowed by the tax cap this year pushes more school districts into fiscal stress. I recommend that local school officials use our system as a tool when crafting their budgets and developing long-term financial plans."

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Tom Reed renewed his efforts to create opportunity for working families by introducing his proposal to help those who are disadvantaged get a 'HAND UP' out of poverty.

"We care about making sure families and individuals, especially the working poor, that are struggling in poverty get the help they need to regain their financial independence," said Reed. "It's only right to help them but also protect the taxpayer, and we do that by creating opportunity, making work pay and making these programs work more effectively."

Reed's proposal, the Help Americans in Need Develop their Ultimate Potential or HAND-UP Act, is designed to give states the flexibility to change how they administer social welfare programs such Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help make sure more money gets to those who need it and reduces government overhead.

Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  No Child Left Behind.  Race To The Top. Common Core.  These are all programs and initiatives federal and state governments have used to attempt to regulate the quality of education.  Administrators, teachers, and especially teachers' unions have balked at some or all of these programs that, when tied to school aid and government budgeting as they always are, have direct impact on the way they are allowed to teach.  On December 10th President Barack Obama signed a new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).  Lansing School Superintendent Chris Pettograsso says this is good news for local educators, who may now have more influence on how they teach.

"It's good news, but it doesn't feel good quite yet, until we really know what's happening and how budget is connected to it -- because it always is," Pettograsso told the Lansing Board Of Education last month.  "Lots of good things are happening locally, but I think we're going to have more leeway to do more of that."

Property tax levy growth for school districts will be capped at 0.12 percent above current levels for the 2016-17 fiscal year, according to data released today by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. The latest calculation affects the tax cap calculations for 677 school districts as well as 10 cities, including the "Big Four" cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse and Yonkers.

"The nearly zero growth in the tax cap will limit budget options for school and municipal officials as they plan for next year," said DiNapoli. "Although some local governments can rely on available reserve funds to bridge the gap, others may need to take a hard look at operations to find ways to cut costs to stay under the cap."

Legislature Chair Lane Delivers Annual Message, Announces 2016 Organizational Structure
In his annual message before the Tompkins County Legislature, Legislature Chair Mike Lane said that Tompkins County, now in its 199th year, "has set a high bar as a leader among its county peers for policies and programs that are intelligent, innovative, compassionate, and essential for its residents and for the people who find employment here…working purposefully to improve our local economy, and in partnership with our city, towns and villages, striving to help make people's lives a little better." 

The work, he notes, is incomplete, with too many people still struggling with the high cost of living, and housing of all kinds in short supply.  With considerable effort over the last 15 years to help revitalize the county seat of Ithaca, he said it is time to also begin to pay more attention to the potential for economic development in the county's outlying areas.  He cautioned that 2016 will be a challenging year, saying that while the Governor and State Legislature propose spending millions of dollars for their "pet projects", the imposed tax cap on local governments and the ever-present high cost of state mandated programs "continues a multi-year thrust against genuine home rule for local governments, while feeding a top-down, personality-driven, autocracy at the state level."  He urged that, instead of shifting costs to counties and other municipalities, that New York reduce real property taxes by taking over all costs of its own mandated programs, such as Medicaid.

County Legislator Mike Sigler told the Lansing Town Board Wednesday that a new program will provide funding for businesses in Tompkins County purchase renewable energy equipment to reduce their operating costs, as well as greenhouse gas emissions.  Businesses will obtain loans through the Energize New York program, then repay them through the County.

"Say I own a business and I want to put solar panels on my roof," Sigler explained.  "But I don't have the money to front that.  Through this program you can get the money that you need, and then you pay it back through your property tax.  That, then, is attached to your property, so even if you sell your property the new owner pays it through the property tax.  You would have to disclose that, obviously, to a new buyer.  It's just a way to get these things going, and it has to be a commercial property."

Do you rent rooms in your home?  You may now be liable to collect taxes for Tompkins County after the Legislature amended its Home Occupancy Law Tuesday.  That includes Airbnb participants, as well as anyone who rents a room, cabin, or other such facility for short term stays.

"It only seems fair to me," said Tompkins County Legislator Mike Sigler Wednesday at a Lansing Town Board meeting.  "You can't be undercutting our hotels and brick and mortar stores."

New York State Senator Mike Nozzolio has been reappointed to serve as the Chairman of the New York Senate Budget Sub-Committee for Public Protection.

The Public Protection Budget Sub-Committee is responsible for reviewing all aspects of the criminal justice budget as well as budgets for correctional services, military and naval affairs, the state police, the judiciary and homeland security. Over the course of the next several weeks, the Sub-Committee will be meeting as the Senate prepares its budget proposal for the Fiscal Year 2017.

Supervisor Ed LaVigne says he wants to make supporting local businesses and attracting new ones to Lansing a top priority.  The first manifestation of this initiative is part of a re-thinking of the Town Web Site that now prominently displays the slogan, 'Lansing is Open For Business'.  Click on the billboard and you see the beginning of a Lansing business directory that LaVigne hopes will list the logos of all the businesses in the Town and Village of Lansing with links to their Web sites.  To participate a local business simply provides a graphic in a particular size and format, plus their Web site address.

"It looks like a billboard," he says.  "You touch or click on it and you see all these different businesses.  This is a work in progress.  The main thing is to benefit our businesses and benefit our residents who shop in this area.  Every once in a while you need to have your information presented to reminder consumers 'we actually can go here' be it restaurants, or any other Lansing business."