Rockland County, N.Y. Committee Addresses Comptroller's Budget Objections

Rockland County, N.Y. officials say they have addressed concerns the New York comptroller’s office expressed about the county’s executive budget.

In September New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli named Rockland County as the most stressed government on his list of roughly 1,000 New York governments. Rockland County is rated BBB-minus by Standard & Poor’s and Baa3 by Moody’s Investors Service.

In late October county executive C. Scott Vanderhoef presented his 2014 budget proposal. Rockland uses a calendar-year fiscal year. The budget included a 16.7% deficit. The $760.9 million operating budget included a 9.9% increase in property taxes.

On Nov. 25 New York Deputy Comptroller Gabriel Deyo sent a letter to Vanderhoef and members of the county legislature making several recommendations. According to Deyo the county was legally bound to follow the recommendations.

The legislature’s Budget and Finance Committee has worked to make some changes to address Deyo’s concerns.

Deyo called for the legislature to reassess the budget’s estimate of residential energy tax revenue.

In response, the committee reduced the budget’s estimate for this revenue to $8 million from $14 million, said committee chairman Michael Grant.

The county had been planning to issue a $5 million bond with the stated purpose of covering the costs of successful tax appeals in 2014. However it was planning to use only $2 million of this to cover the tax appeals. The balance was to be transferred to the county’s local governments. Deyo said this was improper and that the balance of $3 million should be used to pay debt service on the bonds.

The committee agreed to make this change, Grant said.

Deyo called for the county to reduce its estimate of premiums on obligations to a lower level. The committee revised the budget to reduce its premium estimate by $750,000.

Deyo suggested that the county expand its tax overlay. A tax overlay brings in more revenue than formally needed to create a contingency fund to cover uncollected taxes.

The committee responded by increasing this overlay to $1 million from $500,000, Grant said.

The committee also decided that the county executive’s estimate of 2014 sales taxes at $177 million was too conservative. Sales tax revenues are coming in advance of estimates so far this year, Grant said. The committee revised the budgeted figure to $180 million.

With all the changes to revenues figured in, the budget was $5.55 million worse off, Grant said. The committee responded by cutting $6.5 million from a wide variety of programs.

The legislature may make further changes in the budget. It is expected to vote on a version of the budget with the 9.9% tax increase on Thursday night.

In other Rockland County finance news, Moody’s raised its outlook on the county to stable from negative on Tuesday.

The stable outlook “reflects our belief that [Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s] approval of legislation allowing the county to issue debt to reduce its deficit, as well as improved budgeting, will result in stability in its financial operations, albeit at a weakened level,” said analyst Robert Weber and vice president Geordie Thompson.

Grant said that his committee appreciated the changed outlook.

Standard & Poor’s revised its outlook on the county’s rating to stable from negative in September.

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