Rockland County Legislature Approves Budget with a Big Deficit

The Rockland County Legislature voted 11-6 to adopt a budget with a more than 10% operating deficit.

The legislature on Dec. 5 chose to adopt the version of the budget approved by its Budget and Finance Committee.

In October county executive C. Scott Vanderhoef submitted a $760.9 million operating budget. It included a 9.9% increase in property taxes. It also had a deficit of $127 million.

The committee's budget made several small changes to the county executive's budget. All the changes were under $10 million.

Vanderfoef has five days in which he can veto the 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.

Moody's raised its outlook on the county's debt to stable from negative on Dec. 3. S&P did the same in September.

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New York
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