COUNTY GOVERNMENT
Collins offers compromise on county tax hike
Erie County Executive Chris Collins offered a compromise Monday to a Legislature preparing to block his tax increase in court.
Regardless of his offer, the Legislature’s Democrats are consulting today with the law firm they hired. The Democrats want Collins to accept their no-tax-hike budget.
Collins said he’s offering a middle ground on a disputed $5.2 million — the money expected to arrive from the county’s $10 auto-registration fee next year.
He’s offering to use the money strictly to hold down property taxes for 2010 — but not for 2009, when he intends to collect more property taxes than the government should need.
“They will pay it in 2009,” Collins said of taxpayers, “and get it back in 2010.”
Collins continued to insist Monday that he will raise the tax rate to $5.18 for every $1,000 of assessed value. That would be a 4.8 percent increase over this year’s figure and would add $24 to the annual tax bill on a $100,000 home.
Legislature Chairwoman Lynn M. Marinelli, D-Town of Tonawanda, said that she would reserve comment on Collins’ offer but that it is still inconsistent with the budget the Legislature approved.
In drafting his budget for next year, Collins estimated that the auto-registration fee would generate $5.2 million. Legislators didn’t dispute him; they merely moved the $5.2 million to another page of his budget, to make it easier to follow, they said.
Collins said they shouldn’t have done that. To him, the Legislature deleted a revenue estimate in one area and raised it in another, which the County Charter does not allow.
So he said he has no choice but to pretend the $5.2 million does not exist as he calculates the property tax rate for 2009.
The Democrats who made the change believe he’s out of line with a hypertechnical argument.
Marinelli said she has signed a contract with the firm Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria LLP of Buffalo for up to $10,000 in fact-finding and legal research. She has not yet authorized the lawyers to prepare litigation, she said.
Lawmakers have refused to let Collins mail next year’s tax bills. The county each year mails tax bills for town governments in the same envelope, so town tax bills are caught in the dispute, too.
Collins said he made his offer when he met Monday morning with two of the Legislature’s more accommodating members, Republican Minority Leader John J. Mills of Orchard Park and Democrat Thomas J. Mazur of Cheektowaga. Collins said that he acknowledged the $5.2 million will roll in from the auto-registration fee next year but that he cannot use it when figuring the property tax levy because of the Legislature’s mistake.
Collins had also thrown out the lawmakers’ attempt to make him save $1.7 million more than he had budgeted by keeping vacant jobs open longer. He also restored millions of dollars they cut because, he said, they did so improperly.
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