Cuomo unveils Web site for

streamlining government

BY SANDRA PEDDIE | sandra.peddie@newsday.com

10:03 PM EDT, July 7, 2009

ALBANY - Attempting to reduce property taxes, the State Senate Wednesday night adopted a bill streamlining the process for consolidating local governments, and the governor is expected to sign it into law.

The 46-16 vote came after the Assembly approved the bill, 118 to 26. The debates were similar, with supporters of the legislation saying it would allow citizens to strip away layers of government that increase taxes. But critics warned that counties would compel the mergers of villages and special districts, with diminished services.

Inspired by Newsday stories, the legislation was written by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. He lobbied hard for it recently to combat intense opposition from volunteer firefighters, mayors and others.

"Taxpayers may soon be truly empowered to create long overdue efficiencies in local governments and special districts," Cuomo said.

Before the Senate vote, Gov. David A. Paterson told Newsday the bill was "quite admirable," but also said, "I would be willing to take a look at some of the concerns of the local governments."

Sources close to the governor said last night he would sign the measure.

The bill seeks to shrink New York's 10,521 local governments by establishing three avenues for consolidation: a county could create a master plan, a local governing board could start the process, or residents could mount a petition drive.

Inside the gilded Senate chamber Wednesday, tempers flared during the two-hour debate as Republicans sought to change the legislation. Democrats defeated amendments that would exempt fire and library districts.

Only two of Long Island's nine senators backed the bill.

Sen. Brian X. Foley (D-Blue Point) said Cuomo assured him that the pair would work together on a future amendment to address firefighters' concerns. "This is a major initiative of the attorney general and deserves our support," Foley said.

A Cuomo spokesman declined to comment.

Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) said the bill "empowers the voting public" to change governmental structures. He also stressed that the provisions were voluntary.

Detractors raised the specter of overbearing counties forcing the dissolution of smaller entities that are allegedly more in tune with residents' needs. "We should be talking about consolidating state government, that's where the savings lies," said Sen. Carl Marcellino (R-Syosset).

Officials at the 130,000-member Firemen's Association said they hope lawmakers keep their promise of future amendments. President Thomas J. Cuff Jr. of Levittown said, "We're disappointed the fire service wasn't excluded and the school districts were. They have so much more impact on property taxes than special districts have."

AS many recession-racked communities slash their payrolls and cut services to survive the economic downturn, Joseph Carvin is promoting a more radical solution that would cost him his job: dissolving the Town of Rye in Westchester County, where he is the supervisor.

“We’ve reached a point where the taxes are becoming unsustainable — people can’t afford to live here,” Mr. Carvin said of Rye Town, which is composed of the Villages of Port Chester and Rye Brook and a section of the Village of Rye Neck. “Something has to change.”

The proposal is part of a wave of consolidations, mergers and sharing of services being considered by local governments in the New York region as falling revenues and rising unemployment force elected officials to make an unpalatable choice between property tax increases and service cutbacks.

Recently, even some states, like Minnesota and Wisconsin, have taken to sharing services to split costs.

New York State has given $29 million over the past two years to help 140 local governments consolidate services, yielding $250 million in savings, said Lorraine A. Cortes-Vasquez, the secretary of state. Gov. David A. Paterson and legislative leaders in Albany are pushing a bill to encourage mergers.

New Jersey — which has 566 municipalities, the most of any state in the country per capita and, not coincidentally, the nation’s highest property taxes — started slashing aid to more than 300 communities with populations below 10,000 last year to try to pressure them into combining police, fire and trash collection services. Now the state is moving to encourage 20 tiny “doughnut hole” communities to merge with the larger municipalities that surround them.

Despite stiff resistance, Connecticut, which decades ago eliminated county government, is moving ahead with a plan to consolidate its probate courts.

Efforts to streamline government have encountered a backlash from residents, employees and local elected officials. Bart Russell, executive director of the Connecticut Council of Small Towns, warned that the “myopic metro-mania” would not deliver the tax savings being promised and would end up costing public servants their jobs, communities their identities and residents the level of local service they had come to expect.

But as the recession grinds on, many government officials expect that the move to reduce the amount of government will intensify.

“It’s Hamilton versus Jefferson all over again,” said Joseph V. Doria Jr., New Jersey’s commissioner of community affairs and a former mayor of Bayonne. “Jefferson’s model was the small agrarian communities. Hamilton was in favor of more centralized government. And right now, Hamilton has the momentum.”

The crazy quilt of municipal governments that ring the metropolitan area grew for an assortment of personal, cultural, economic and political reasons, most having little to do with the best use of tax dollars or the quality of services. Some were established along highway routes or commuter rail lines, some to provide housing near up-and-coming manufacturing centers or to establish a political fief, and others to separate racial, ethnic or religious groups.

In New Jersey, Florham Park was founded by a wealthy couple — Florence Vanderbilt, granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Hamilton McKown Twombly — who wanted to pay lower taxes. Tavistock (population 24) was created in 1921 to sidestep the blue laws that prevented members of the Tavistock Country Club from golfing on Sundays.

The proliferation of government bodies — and the money they consume — has become the stuff of legend: New Jersey recently voted to phase out more than 20 school districts that had administrators and offices but no schools. New York State has 6,900 special taxation districts to pay for municipal water, sewer and trash collection services, and some of these districts have more cars and supervisors than workers.

In New York, nine small upstate communities are considering dissolving themselves and being absorbed by neighbors, though only one — the Village of Pike (pop. 382 ) in Wyoming County — has voted to do so.

Next could be the Town of Rye, which has an annual budget of $2.8 million to oversee parks and provide administrative services, like tax collection, for the three villages it unites. If the town disappeared, the villages would have to provide those services to their residents.

In New Jersey, one community has disbanded in recent decades, in 1997, when Hardwick Township absorbed Pahaquarry (pop. 7). Two mergers are being seriously considered in the state: one involving Sussex Borough and Wantage Township, the other between the Village and Borough of Chester.

In New York, the bill supported by Mr. Paterson would encourage county leaders to draw up reorganization plans to reduce the size and number of municipal governments and make it easier for voters to place such proposals on the ballot.

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who supports the bill, said that sharing services made sense for the vast majority of New York communities, “if you care more about your children than your sewer pipes.”

The most pitched battle in New York over scaling back government involves the special districts, which assess taxes for libraries, sewers, trash collection and water systems but have little accountability to voters and — until recently — have received little scrutiny from state officials. In Nassau County alone there are more than 200 such districts that levy $500 million a year in taxes and have been criticized in audits for wasteful spending and duplicating the efforts of other government agencies.

“These districts are the last bastion of the Nassau County political machine,” said Jeff Guillot, of the Long Island Progressive Coalition, a nonpartisan community group. “They hire lobbyists with taxpayer dollars to fight against bills to restrict their power.”

But advocates of small government bodies say that they can be more cost-efficient than larger bodies. And, these advocates say, smaller entities provide people the chance to get involved in local issues, preserving a hallmark of states with a strong tradition of “home rule” or autonomy in local governance.

When Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut won legislative approval this month for a plan to reduce the number of probate courts to 50 from 117, dozens of local officials converged on Hartford to protest the move, which is moving forward despite their objections.

Tom Marsh, a first selectman in Chester, said fewer courts would prove inefficient and alienate tax payers.

“All of the representatives and senators will tell you that the most fiscally accountable form of government is the town meeting,” Mr. Marsh said. “So why would we be moving away from that form of government to address a fiscal issue?”

A commission in New Jersey working on reorganizing government has tried to offer some clarity on the debate about the efficiency of large and small governments. It recently issued a report saying that, generally, government is most cost-effective when it serves populations between 25,000 and 250,000. Reed Gusciora, a state assemblyman from Princeton, is trying to force dozens of communities in his district to merge or lose state aid.

“We’ve tried everything to coax these communities to the altar,” said Mr. Gusciora, who sponsored the bill on the so-called doughnut hole communities. “What we need now is a few shotgun weddings.”

One of the best ideas for reducing high taxes on Long Island is a proposal from Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that would simplify the process for dissolving or consolidating special taxing districts. At this moment - and we hope we're wrong here - it appears to be the only tax relief likely to come out of Albany during this legislative session. Lawmakers must make sure it gets done, and gets done right. One study commission after another has made the case against these costly districts, whose commissioners earn salaries and benefits at taxpayers' expense. But the poster child for change is the Gordon Heights Fire District, where people pay as much as $2,600 in property taxes for fire protection. Twice, residents have submitted signatures asking the town to take over the district or allow a merger with an adjacent firefighting unit. The first time, the petitions were dismissed on a technicality. They now await word on their second attempt. The delays and excuses are maddening. Cuomo's proposal would simplify the law and remove rules that were written to sabotage consolidations. Just 10 percent of residents or 5,000 people, whichever is less, could petition for change. Lawmakers should resist watering down the proposal by tinkering with those numbers. After blocking legislation last year, Assemb. Speaker Sheldon Silver has recently come around. He said of the Cuomo proposal, "A key element to providing property tax relief is by reducing the unnecessary and outdated layers of local governments through consolidation." Now that he's said this, he needs to follow through.  Albany leaders say they understand our pain. Let them prove it by enacting this proposal this year. hN