10 • THE MAMARONECK REVIEW • July 13, 2018
Financial report warns of growing county deficit
In a new financial report, Westchester County lawmakers were warned of fiscal instability with the 2018 county budget. Photo courtesy Flickr.com
By JAMES PERO Staff Writer Westchester County’s financial woes are the highlight of a report conducted by the Finance Department released late last month detailing a more than $32 million budget deficit for 2018.Due to the deficit, the county’s Democratic Caucus is pointing to the fiscal practices of former County Executive Rob Astorino, a Republican. “This is an issue that the Board of Legislators and the county executive inherited,” said Board of Legislators Chairman Ben Boykin, a White Plains Democrat. “It is going to take time to work through and stabilize the financial situation of the county.” Specifically, county lawmakers point to several years of no property tax increases under Astorino, calling the results a “structural problem” within the county budget. When Astorino took office in 2010, he pledged to not raise county taxes—a commitment he met in each of his eight years in office, before being ousted by FEE from page 1
litter, and end up in water bodies where it really doesn’t break down.” Seligson added that she is a frequent boater on the Long Island
Democrat George Latimer in the 2017 election.Also looming is an outstanding contract with the county’s largest union, the Civil Service Employees Association, CSEA, which has been expired for seven years. And lawmakers have pumped the brakes on a plan to privatize the Westchester County Airport, an agreement that Astorino had used to inject an additional $15 million in revenue into the 2018 budget. It is unclear if the county will now proceed with such a proposal under the new administration. In May, a financial review of county debt projections for the 2018 fiscal year, forecasted by new Budget Director Lawrence Soule put this year’s budget shortfall at $28.7 million. That number, however, also does not factor in contract negotiations with the CSEA. Soule forecasted that the contract could end up totaling upwards of $40 million. As a result of the deficit— which stems from the county spending more money than it
generates in revenue—lawmakers will likely be forced to look at the prospect of increases property taxes. Meanwhile, the county will be forced to draw on its fund balance to offset budget gaps. For the fiscal years of 2017 and 2018, lawmakers are looking at a 61 percent reduction of fund balance if used to fill in those shortfalls—a reduction that could directly affect the county’s AAA credit rating from Moody’s, a financial service and credit rating agency. That rating affects the county’s ability to borrow and issue bonds at preferential interest rates and could prove increasingly important as the Federal Reserve continues to increase borrowing rates. In the county’s favor, however, has been better than expected sales tax revenue which compared to 2017 revenue is up 6.4 percent so far this year, and can be attributed to increasing gas prices of which the county takes a share through taxes.
Sound—a body of water adjacent to bio diverse wetlands—and often spots plastic bags drifting across the water. While the proposal has yet to be drafted into text, Seligson said it will be mulled over by the town’s
Sustainability Collaborative for the next few months before recommendations are eventually given to the town board who will help draft a law and make changes.
CONTACT: james@hometwn.com
CONTACT: james@hometwn.com