LEGISLATURE STUFF- Picking a Fiscal Poison

CATSKILL - It’s sort of like digging a ditch to divert water away from your driveway only to send it shooting, unintended, toward your back yard.

Greene County Legislature members are still discussing the 2026 budget which had a public hearing in late October.

Several different suggestions were made by residents at that hearing about what to do with a plethora of sales tax revenue, ideas which, since then, have been bandied about by lawmakers.

An ardent appeal was put forth by numerous citizens regarding the Meals of Wheels home-delivery program where spending cuts were proposed,

Department of Human Services officials were recommending changing the delivery of hot meals from five times per week to once per week.

Five meals would be dropped off, but four of them would be frozen, keeping  homebound residents fed but eliminating four home visits, representing a significant savings on food and mileage pay for volunteer transport.

While the program is not designed for the purpose of human contact, numerous citizens urged lawmakers to put a “human face” on their decision-making.

Helen Kerr, from the town of Lexington, shared a story of how her parents were drivers for the program and how she continued their volunteerism.

“People getting the meals have given so much to their communities,” Kerr said. “They like to see the volunteers every day. They depend on us.

“We may be the only people they see on any given day. It really wouldn’t cost that much more to keep going the five days,” Kerr said.

Lawmakers, discussing the program at two followup workshops, agreed to maintain the status quo, needing to move roughly $275,000 from one line item to another which, on the surface, sounds simple.

There is more to it, however, as the proposed 2026 budget, while seeing a rise in costs from $136,082,679 to $141,858,252, contains no increase in the overall tax levy for the seventh straight year, tapping reserves.

On the surface, that too seems black-and-white but it isn’t, due to a very complex State property assessment and taxation system based upon similarly head-scratching Equalization Rates.

So, even while taxes are not going up, residents in six of the county’s fourteen towns will be forking out more money.

Lawmaker Michael Lanuto (District 1, Catskill), not pleased at the prospect, is promoting the idea of tapping more reserves, particularly from ample sales tax revenues, to offset those financial inequities. 

Lanuto is expected to broach the subject again during a legislative Finance Committee meeting on November 17, the last session prior to the full board’s November 19 gathering.

Lawmakers traditionally pass the budget during the mid-November session, although Lanuto’s desire to spare the six towns added taxes could be setting up a possible floor fight at the Finance Committee talks.

County officials say the mathematical process for granting Lanuto his wish is not complicated, moving numbers from here to there.

Viewed from a policy perspective, though, there are potentially unforeseen impacts, not dissimilar to directing ditch water one way only to have it appear in force elsewhere.

It would cost approximately $2.3 million to bring every town up to zero tax levy increase, an available amount done by juggling Fund Balance, including sales tax reserves, according to county officials.

However, in an explanation as clear as mud to one mule of taxation, those dollars would then need to be attached to the budget ad infinitum, giving a tax break one year but needing to make it up in the next cycle.

Within the proposed 2026 budget, $5.5 million in Fund Balance has already been contributed to offset unavoidable jumps in spending such as retirement benefits, insurances, Social Service, fuel oil, etc.

A major question that will need to be answered is whether it is fiscally wiser to maintain the current reserves, which are used to plan ahead for known expenses, or provide the tax break.

It is estimated that every $1 million put toward the tax break would result in a reduction of 8 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value.

Factor in the $2.3 million and you determine the savings for a typical homeowner. “Could it be done?” says one county official. “Yes, but something else would suffer.”

And there is no way to control sales tax revenues, a key component of the budget, giving some lawmakers pause to diminish existing reserves on a relatively minor tax return, so a poison must be picked.