Mayors and “Joe Taxpayer” launch Web site
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- November
- 10
For those craving more information on how what happens in Albany trickles down to your community, the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officials has launched www.StopTheTaxShift.org. Its purpose is to educate policymakers, the media, the public and, more specifially, New York’s overburdened real property taxpayer.
With New York’s fiscal crisis, mayors and other local officials are preparing to fight back any potential threats to state aid they receive. Last week, members of the New York Association of Counties and the County Executives Association cautioned that reductions in state aid could negatively affect communities and result in property-tax hikes. Gov. David Paterson has asked lawmakers to hold a special budget-cutting session in Albany next week. New York faces a $1.5 billion shortfall this year, which is expected to grow, and $12.5 million in 2009-10.
“New York is at a crossroads,” Cohoes Mayor John McDonald, president of the Conference of Mayors, said in a statement. “Will our leaders repeat the near fatal mistakes of the early 1990s, when local aid was slashed, and from which many communities have never recovered? Or will the governor and state legislators take the right approach and protect municipal property taxpayers from the devastating effect of cuts in AIM (municipal aid) funding?”
Features on StopTheTaxShift.org include a blog by “Joe Taxpayer” and a “Mandate of the Week” section.
This entry was posted
on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 12:33 pm by Cara Matthews.
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Category: Albany, Assembly, David Paterson, State Senate, State budget, budget, state aid, state legislature, taxes
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one of the interesting issues raised by cuts to municipalities is the effect on their ability to pay
interest on bonds that are based on revenue…why would
anyone buy a municipal bond if the risk they are taking
is that they will not receive their principal back?