O’Mara: New Democratic budget shirks state responsibility by creating a new tax and shifting cost to counties

Albany, N.Y., April 1—State Senator Tom O’Mara (R,C,I-Big Flats) today denounced a provision in the final 2019-20 state budget to restore critical state funding for area towns and villages by created a new tax and imposing yet another unfunded state mandate on counties.

O’Mara called the cost shift, first proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo and later agreed to by the Democratic leadership in the Senate and Assembly, “one of the most egregious examples in the new state budget of a state government that’s out of touch and out of control.”

In his 2019-20 proposed Executive Budget released in January, Cuomo unexpectedly called for the elimination of Aid and Incentives to Municipalities (AIM) funding for most of the towns and villages across the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions, and statewide.  AIM is the largest single source of state revenue sharing for these localities.

After O’Mara and many other state legislators joined town supervisors, village mayors, and other local leaders to oppose the Cuomo cut, the governor reversed course in February and amended his original budget plan to restore the AIM cut by shifting the cost responsibility from the state to counties.

Specifically, counties will now be required to pick up the cost of AIM for towns and villages and pay for it with new revenue from a new internet sales tax on all consumers also created as part of the new budget.

O’Mara said, “Here’s what one-party, Democratic control of New York government produces as a plan: another new tax and another unfunded state mandate dumped on top of what’s already one of the biggest piles of taxes and unfunded mandates in America.  This is government out of touch and out of control. The new state budget once again ignores the burden already facing upstate local property taxpayers and shirks another state responsibility.”

[Watch Senator O'Mara's comments on the Senate floor]