Calling County Budget A Political Stunt Trotta Asks NYS Comptroller To Investigate

Suffolk County Legislators Trotta, McCaffrey and Flotteron Call County Executive’s Tax Cap and Entire Budget a Political Stunt

 “There are simply too many loopholes in the State’s tax cap law when a County Executive can raise taxes by 9% over a two-year period and claim he’s operating with a 2% cap,” said Legislator Trotta.

(Smithtown, NY)… Three members of the Suffolk Legislature’s Republican Caucus, Suffolk County Legislators Rob Trotta, Kevin McCaffrey and Steven Flotteron call County Executive’s Steve Bellone’s claim that his budget is staying within the tax cap is a political stunt. “He is lowering the sewer tax for 76,000 people in the Southwest Sewer District when it should have been lowered in 2012, when the bond was paid off – but he continued to impose the tax. In addition, over 300,000 households will be above the tax cap. This is nothing but a shell game,” said Legislator Trotta.  We would like the New York State Comptroller to investigate this matter. 

The legislators noted that the action by the County Executive to continue taxing the residents of the Southwest Sewer District to pay off a debt that was already retired prompted a class of ratepayers to file suit in the New York State Supreme Court to invalidate the Executive’s illegal taxation and force the return of the funds to the ratepayers. The case is presently pending.

Instead of having immediately returned all that improperly raised money to ratepayers, the County Executive has played a cute game of selectively returning only enough money from the illegally created fund to offset the huge tax increases he has proposed in the police district over the past several years. All this so he can make the bogus claim in his campaign literature that he is living within the 2% property tax cap.

“His mismanagement of county government is evident by the five bond downgrades during his administration,” added Trotta.

“County Executive Bellone is up to his deceitful practices again. I am outraged that the County Executive would single out and abuse the rate payers of the Southwest Sewer District by overtaxing them millions of dollars. This is the same shell game that he played in Babylon with the garbage tax,” said Legislator Steven J. Flotteron.

Bellone’s critics point to multiple audits by the New York State Comptroller, who excoriated  Bellone’s practices as Babylon Town Supervisor in improperly overtaxing garbage district taxpayers in order to create a slush fund that would later be used to offset a 13% general fund property tax increase.

“This is about transparency, or the lack of it. The County Executive is claiming to lower the taxes for the ratepayers of the Southwest Sewer District to help them but in only so the decrease can be used as an offset to raise your taxes elsewhere and stay under the tax cap. The truth is the ratepayers of the sewer district were overcharged and our sewer taxes shouldn’t be as high as they are,” said Legislator Kevin McCaffrey.

The legislators demand that the County Executive give the taxpayers back all of the money he improperly took from them and give it back now, and not through drips that help paper over his huge tax increases in other parts of the budget,