As your County Executive, I’ll continue the fight to reduce the tax burden so you can keep more of your hard-earned dollars in your pocket!
Here are some of the ways I’ll work to make our county government spend less, tax less, and work even smarter for you
Spend Less
- Priority based budgeting. You probably do it at home, and we should do it in county government.
- Freeze pay raises for elected officials – including the county executive
- In addition to following the state mandated tax cap, we should work to self impose our own cap on new discretionary county spending
- Review, consolidate & centralize county resources and programs to save money and make services more efficient and cost-effective
- Partner with local governments and other municipalities to revisit opportunities for shared services and reduce cost of services to taxpayers.
Tax Less
- Reign in county taxes and spending by doing even more to right-size county government and deliver essential services more effectively and efficiently
- Build a plan to eliminate sales tax for basic clothing and footwear for all people, including low income & middle class families who are disproportionately affected by this regressive tax:
Consumption based taxation is still far more preferable as opposed to more punitive taxes on income or property; however, this particular type of sales tax is especially unfair and regressive. Putnam County already collects sales tax at a higher rate. It’s time we give some needed tax relief to families. County government should not reap tax benefits from a windfall caused by Washington D.C.’s misguided policies that created sky-rocketing inflation.
- Itemize the amount of sales tax money already shared with local governments by the state’s sales tax diversion supporting the Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) program. Local municipalities deserve to know how much they already get from taxpayers through our county government in services
- Say NO to new costly tax diversion proposals that would simply make it easier for local governments to spend more taxpayer money
- Introduce a Taxpayer Bill of Rights
- Any proposed tax rate increases will be discussed in an open and transparent manner
- Any proposed tax rate increases will include extended public comment periods beyond what is required by state law
- Any tax rate increase should be passed with a 60% vote (or supermajority)
When our county government has more money than it needs, give it back to the taxpayers.
As your Assemblyman, I voted against every tax increase proposed in the New York State Assembly and embraced opportunities to provide genuine tax relief for our hardworking neighbors and families.
Here are some of the other ways I fought to reform Albany and right-size government:
- Opposed automatically increasing the budget year after year
- Made the property tax cap permanent
- Sponsored legislation to amend the State Constitution to cap state debt, prohibit “backdoor borrowing” by authorities, and limit debt to capital investments
- Introduced legislation with Senator Sue Serino to restrict the executive branch’s reckless abuse of the “Message of Necessity”, and ensure that legislators and the public have appropriate time to review legislative proposals.