Updated 06/19/2009 06:03 AM
County executives protest Albany's legislative shutdown
SOUTHERN TIER, N.Y. -- The hotel/motel tax increase in Tioga County may bring in around $150,000 a year for the county. That doesn't sound like much, but with increasing financial pressures and state legislators dragging their collective feet, it's caused a whole mess of problems.
"We've delayed backfilling positions. We're physically moving people around, trying to save on rentals," said Dale Weston, a Republican and the chair of the Tioga County Legislature.
Tioga's problem is one of the central issues with legislative gridlock -- holding up needed tax bills that help set budgets and generate revenue.
So far, the Southern Tier's sales tax bills have been safe.
"I'm pleased to say that the senate passed the sales tax for Tioga County and Broome and my local counties. So those are out of the way," said Republican State Senator Tom Libous, one of the Senate leaders.
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But that's not the case for dozens of counties across the state. And that's why several County executives hit the phones Thursday, to tell Albany that their coup was undermining much-needed growth.
"I think it puts us in a real negative position in a global economy when it comes to producing jobs," said Tom Santulli, the Chemung County executive.
And in Broome County, even though the legislative gridlock doesn't have a direct effect on specific legislation, it's put increased pressure on Democratic county executive Barbara Fiala to reject politics as usual.
"I'm getting a lot of emails and phone calls from constituents and they're not happy with this. They expect their politicians to be politicians during election time. After that, we have to do the work," Fiala said.
The repeated theme in Thursday's meeting and with most county heads was that Albany needs to get back to work.
"It would be wishful thinking, but I'd like to see them come to consensus so they can get back and function and take care of the duties that they need to do," said Weston.
And they need to do it fast, with the current legislative session ending early next week.
Weston says the legislative delay could also hold up Tioga County's proposed bill to ban texting while driving among other legislative initiatives.