Sales tax vote spurs latest clash in Erie County Legislature

Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - A new local law proposal suggested by the Democrats of the Erie County Legislature regarding a change in the required majority for a biannual county tax vote could curb the bargaining power of the four Republican Erie County lawmakers.

Every two years, Erie County's legislative body must approve 1.75% of the 8.75% county sales tax by a two-thirds or "supermajority" vote, meaning that seven Democratic lawmakers must have one of the four Republican lawmakers to obtain passage of this vote, providing an essential revenue source for county operations.

In order to ensure that funding comes through in an expedited manner, the Democratic legislators are proposing a plain, majority vote in order to pass the 1.75% sales tax.

"Why it's needed, I think there is a multitude of reasons," says Democratic Majority Leader Tim Meyers.

"There's 30 school districts, 25 towns, 18 villages, three cities that use a lot of this money in their budgets, and it gets held up a lot at the end, for whatever reason, and their budgets are in question. You can go around the state and you can look and there's only one county so far that we found that takes a supermajority just to keep the tax where it is, and that's Erie County. It's a lot about fiscal stability, certainty for the town, the county, trying to get projects done, and just again, overall fiscal stability."

The County Republican lawmakers, who are outnumbered by the Democrats 7-4, have been using the supermajority as leverage to bring some of their concerns to the forefront and last year, it was enough to get County Executive Mark Poloncarz to come to the bargaining table.

"A supermajority has always been required. It's been required since the day they started the sales tax sharing agreement, in order to make sure that everybody's voice is properly heard in in finalizing these negotiations," said Republican Legislator Chris Greene.

"Last year, when these negotiations took place between the Republicans and the county executive, we were able to get a tax levy decrease for the first time in a generation. That was $1 million. But the point is, Erie County collected less money in property tax, and the year prior, we were at least over $100 million in surplus the last couple years. So just seemed, giving a break to the people that were paying our salaries seemed to be the right idea and we were also able to suspend sales tax on home heating during our winter months."

Greene says he see this move by the Democrats as a "power grab". He thinks this could be an attempt to raise sales taxes even further.

"This is the first step in a multi-pronged approach to really raising sales tax and taking the sharing agreement out of the suburban communities, suburban school districts and really, all school districts, because once they remove the supermajority from the sales tax extensions, then the next step commonly would be able to provide sales tax increases without any Republican support as well and so that would be step two, so I'm not sure if we're gonna go up to 9% or what the long term goal of the Democrats are, but that's certainly an option."

Greene also makes note of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown asking for additional sales tax revenue to be sent to the City of Buffalo and that County Executive Poloncarz stated that the only thing that can be done to do that is by taking it away from other municipalities and school districts, so if the supermajority was removed, they can now open up the sales tax sharing agreement without Republican input.

The proposal was submitted by Meyers last Wednesday and was forwarded to the Finance Committee the next day. There will be a public hearing this Thursday on the matter at 6 p.m. ET in the Chambers of the Legislature at 92 Franklin Street.

"There's a long way to the finish line here," notes Legislator Meyers. "There could possibly be legal challenges, we would have to talk with both commissioners at the Board of Elections to see if it can get on the ballot for November, what that language looks like, what the ballot looks like. So there's a lot of hurdles. That's why we're trying to get out in front of it. Again, we'll see what the people's feelings are, if they liked these last minute negotiations. I mean, this has been going on for a while. So let's hear what they have to say."