O’Mara: New budget is bad news for taxpayers (UPDATED: Watch more)

Albany, N.Y., April 1—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Big Flats) today said that the 2019-2020 state budget approved by Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Legislature’s Democratic majorities welcomes back “a tax-and-spend approach to government that’s bad news for taxpayers, job creators, and workers.”

Since the beginning of the year, O’Mara has been calling for state leaders to make tax relief a priority in the new state budget.  Instead, he said the budget adopted today relies on more than $1 billion in new taxes and fees to support significant new short- and long-term state spending.  The new taxes will include a new sales tax on internet purchases that will affect all consumers.

O’Mara said that the budget also sets in motion new state spending commitments that will become increasingly expensive, including a system of public campaign financing, electoral reforms like early voting, tuition assistance for illegal immigrants, and others.

And while O’Mara has long supported making the state’s two-percent local property tax cap permanent, which the new budget does, he said that New York continues to ignore the urgent need to roll back unfunded state mandates in order to give the cap any hope of ever producing property tax cuts for local taxpayers.

“Tax-and-spend government has been a disaster for New York State in the past and it’s about to make a mess of things again. We needed to stop taxing, spending, regulating, and mandating New Yorkers to death.  Yet here we go again with a tax-and-spend approach to government that’s bad news for taxpayers, job creators, and workers, especially upstate,” said O’Mara, noting that the last time state government fell under one-party, Democratic control for two years beginning in 2009, taxes and fees were increased by $14 billion to support upwards of $14 billion in new state spending.

[CLICK HERE to view Senator O'Mara's reaction to the new state budget]