Archive: Opinions

Recognizing that New Yorkers are the highest taxed people in the nation, the State wants to force Tompkins County to cap its tax increase at 2%.  Tompkins County wants the State to remove unfunded mandates, especially if a tax cap is imposed.  I think they are both right.  It is absurd that the same legislators that landed New York State in the multi-billion dollar crisis it now wallows in should tell anybody, let alone other governments, how to raise and spend money, the level of taxation in New York has also grown to be absurd.

Maintaining mandates and imposing the tax cap at the same time wrenches local control from the hands of the people who live in Tompkins County.  If you can't raise taxes and you're forced to spend more and more on programs you may not want, you have less and less to spend on things you do want.  For instance, 911 service isn't mandated, nor is the part of the Sheriff Department that conducts road patrol.  I think those services are important, and I hope we can keep them.  Further, losing road patrol will put more pressure on the State Police, forcing state taxes up still more.

The list of mandates is long, but some of the main ones targeted by reformers are employee health insurance costs, pension costs, Wick's Law (which requires multiple contractors for all construction costing more than $50,000), the Taylor Law (which outlines requirements for union/taxing authority negotiations), county jails, and local government procurement practices.

Lansing Board Of Education members have long complained of the negative impact Wick's Law and the Taylor Law have had on their ability to keep costs down.  To me these laws appear to have come from well meaning motives, but have not worked at all well in reality.  You might say the same for all the mandates. 

If State legislators think it is so important that all these behaviors be imposed on local communities I don't understand why they don't think they were important enough to fund.  Nobody I talk to understands that point.

One of the great things about America (or horrible things, depending on your point of view) is that wherever you go you can expect a certain level of sameness.  That ranges from the expectation that you will find a MacDonald's restaurant nearby to the expectation of shared values, similar laws and so on.  That doesn't mean that each community can't or doesn't have its own personality, but it provides a baseline of expectations that makes it relatively easy to travel and move to virtually anywhere in the United States.

I suppose mandates have some responsibility for that.  And while I'd rather trust my local government to represent my preferred way of life than state or federal governments, I do understand that there are benefits to those larger entities determining some reasonable level of sameness.

It's the not paying part that stumps me.  Forcing local municipalities to pay for initiatives they don't initiate is totalitarian if you ask me.  I suppose any laws walk the line between democracy and totalitarianism at the most idealistic level, but unfunded mandates are just plain fundamentally wrong.

Sure we're the same people paying federal, state, county, town, village, city, fire district, school, library... taxes.  Many people say that it would be fairer if these things were paid for by income tax rather than property tax.  I think I think that myself.  I'm pretty sure...

Back to the point, whatever you think about mandates or tax caps, having both is unfair.  Our county legislators are telling us that 5% of A 6% tax rise this year went to mandated programs, and that if there is a 2% cap next year the other 3% or more will have to come from cutting things local people have opted for.  Given that the State obviously can't afford to pay for the mandates it imposes, maybe it's time to simply eliminate all mandates until it can pay for them.

Do state legislators see any irony in the fact that they are capping taxes in New York?  That they are capping taxation for other taxing authorities?  There are some governments (yes, here in Tompkins County) that actually tax and spend responsibly.  Isn't this fodder for stand-up comedians that New York State legislators are telling those municipalities to tax less?  And spend more?  If it weren't so sickening I'd be laughing.  Nope, no LOL on that one.

That doesn't mean that all these mandated programs would disappear.  The really useful ones would probably rise to the top, or just continue through inertia.  But it would give communities discretion to pay for things they really think are important, while helping over-burdened taxpayers survive in a state that is seriously out of control.

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