THE ALBANY IMPACT

Erie County residents can’t stomach any new tax increases. They’re also finding service cuts hard to swallow. And now that the County Legislature has cut just about every dime of discretionary money in the budget that it could find or was willing to trim, how can taxpayers square that circle?

God may help those who help themselves, but in New York’s overtaxed counties, eyes must be raised to Albany. Erie County helped make its own mess by refusing to slightly raise property taxes or significantly cut spending even as expenses continued to go up. But it had help.

The table was set by a state government that has found it too easy to adopt politically popular but expensive programs and continue regulations that help drive up public costs.

The local quest to keep taxes down, while still paying for essential services and such quality-of-life amenities as parks, can’t succeed without substantive reform in the way Albany does business. Erie County’s state-mandated spending has grown by $130 million since 2000, according to county officials. That’s almost as much as the $150 million or so of discretionary funding that was included in a $1.1 billion county budget largely driven by mandatory costs or debt service. Most, if not all, of that discretionary spending has now been cut.

Chief among the needed Albany reforms is Medicaid spending — mandated by Albany — that now consumes more than the entire county property tax levy.

If New York lawmakers and the governor are serious about making this state, and its counties, more business friendly, they need to commit to bringing Medicaid costs in line with the national average. According to budget officials, the county’s 2004 budget gap of more than $100 million would have disappeared if the cost of the state’s Medicaid program mirrored the national average.

Medicaid spending, for all the problems it causes, is far from the only thing contributing to the tax burden here — 42 percent above the national average, a figure that includes state, local and school taxes. Despite the fact that the county property tax in Erie County is half, or less than half, of some other upstate counties, the combination of state, local and school taxes is a drag on the regional economy.

In Buffalo and its suburbs, property taxes per $1,000 of home value rank second nationally among 276 metropolitan areas — edged out only by Syracuse, on a list that includes eight New York regions among the nation’s 10 highest-taxed urban centers. That burden is becoming more onerous as Erie County continues to lose population — it has lost more than any other county in the state since 2000, according to Census figures.

Given that drain, it is imperative that Albany move to reduce the tax and regulatory obstacles to help bring and retain jobs. New York has the highest per-capita taxation of the nation’s 10 most populous states. In addition, in times when state investments don’t cover pension-fund costs, municipalities also face burdensome assessments to fund retirement benefits that are far more generous than private-sector pension packages.

Excellent editorial in the Buffalo News, it is good to see the people speaking out and attempting to educate others. That is my main objective here.

Medicaid…. and they did not even touch the issue this year in Albany, $45 Billion and still growing.