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Hawley: Legislature must tackle 'highest in nation' property taxes before session ends

By Howard B. Owens

Press release:

Assemblyman Steve Hawley (R,I,C – Batavia) is urging legislative leaders to make controlling property taxes the number one priority of the remaining weeks of the 2011 Legislative Session. The Tax Foundation recently released a study that shows homeowners in Orleans, Niagara, Monroe and Genesee counties face a property tax burden ranked in the top 10 nationally, based on percentage of median home value. Orleans, Niagara and Monroe occupy the top three spots respectively, while Genesee comes in eighth.

“To see all four counties in the 139th Assembly District paying some of the highest property taxes in the nation should serve as a loud and clear reminder to legislative leaders that we have no greater priority during this year’s session than to provide property tax relief to Western New York families and businesses, coupled with mandate relief for local governments and school districts,” Hawley said.

“Furthermore, 22 out of the 25 highest-taxed counties are found in Upstate New York. State government has placed Upstate’s economy at a massive, competitive disadvantage by increasing costs on localities and has forced families out of the homes they spent their entire lives working to build.

"I have consistently supported implementing a property-tax cap that will re-open Upstate New York for business and embrace the homeowners that have built their lives here, and I urge my colleagues in state government to join me in putting all of their energy behind this measure.”

Hawley is a co-sponsor of multiple bills to cap property taxes under consideration in the Assembly. While skyrocketing property taxes must be addressed immediately, so must the contributing factors that have led to such crushing levies.

“The cost-drivers handed down from Albany to local governments are a ploy to support unsustainable levels of spending,” Hawley said. “The passage of a property tax cap is not only crucial for homeowners, but it is also a vital component of the fight to repeal unfunded mandates that force localities to raise taxes year after year.

"The property tax crisis is truly symptomatic of New York’s most crippling problem – an unending appetite for spending. Passing a property tax cap is not the end of a long struggle, but rather the first domino to fall that will bring down unfunded mandates and reign in state spending.”

Lorna Klotzbach

Steve Hawley is to be commended for working in the state legislature to reduce unfunded mandates and the taxes they produce in upstate regions. He should also be investigating and publicizing the unfounded claims being made by the GCEDC that if the county and town of Alabama change their comprehensive growth plans to allow the STAMP project then Alabama's town taxes will steadily decrease 'til they are near nothing at all! The consultant hired by the Alabama town council to review the hurried GEIS (Generic Environmental Impact Study) recently published by the GCEDC questions whether that project will ever reach that full build-out stage--upon which all of the GCEDC's rosy projections are based. At the last Alabama town council meeting in May, the consultants said, "...most of these projects don't get past Phase I...the GCEDC's projections are based on full build-out...they need to provide more realistic data to support their claims of benefits to the region...." Steve Hawley and our county legislators who seem so supportive of the STAMP project should actually attend the ALabama town meetings rather than simply taking the word of the GCEDC representatives. If they did, they would know that the local folks are in need of tax relief and they would know that the GCEDC is not providing it.

Jun 7, 2011, 12:18pm Permalink

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