News

October 23, 2012

Southern Tier (WENY) - We have continuing coverage tonight on Governor Andrew Cuomo's comments about unfunded state mandates. Cuomo said Monday, no more mandate relief is on the way and local governments will now have to balance their books on their own. That certainly grabbed the attention of leaders across the Empire state, including Chemung County Executive Tom Santulli. Santulli says right now almost $27 million that comes from the county property tax plus an additional 9.7 million from the county's sales tax goes to paying for unfunded state programs. He also says that out of 4.4 billion dollars the state gets in taxes, 4 billion of that is used for mandates. He cites medicaid as one of the main problems, and he says there's a lot of waste and duplication throughout the state. Santulli says he doesn't expect to raise taxes in the county this year.