Two articles just in the last week have focused the spotlight once again on the fact that many of the town governments in Suffolk County are continuing to pierce the cap and raise taxes to unreasonable levels
The question must be asked: Why are so many Suffolk towns, such as Islip and Riverhead, constantly piercing the cap, while Nassau towns and Nassau government itself have held the line for the last several years?
It was reported that Islip Town will be seeking yet another hike in 2027 to deal with its structural imbalance. That will be after the town already raised taxes by 27% by piercing the tax cap over the last couple of years.
This past year, the supervisor’s cap-piercing tax increase went into effect automatically when the remainder of the town board failed to take any action. This process perhaps gets the board members off the hook by saying they didn’t vote for the budget, but we don’t recall seeing any council member putting forth an alternative budget that would bring it within the cap.
A few days later, we learned that Riverhead is also facing severe budget problems, after having pierced the spending cap in each of the last four years. The new supervisor has called for an early retirement program as a way to cut spending. We said many times before that these early retirement programs provide savings that are illusory, and short-term at best. Long-term, they wind up costing more.
Surely, if you replace a police officer making $150,000 with a newbie making half of that, you will save some money for a couple of years. But ultimately, it is a net loss, given the fact that you’re now paying the pension of the retiree and also health benefits for both the retiree and the incoming employee. Often, the officer’s pension costs more than the incoming employee’s salary.
The only way your early retirement program works is if you use it to move out high-paid employees with the intent of abolishing that position once it’s vacated.
That is rare indeed in government.
What’s most amazing is that these towns are facing a fiscal dilemma, despite the fact that they were the beneficiaries of unprecedented amounts of aid that floated in from the federal government during Covid. We had warned back then that you couldn’t take this money and use it to fund new programs, positions and perks that would now create a new, higher base.
Spending in World War II skyrocketed budgets and the national debt, but after the war, spending levels came back down to earth. Not with Covid. These county, town and state governments took the money, funded pet projects with it and kept them as part of the base.
These big spending levels have now become the new normal, even in Republican-dominated towns in Suffolk County. What’s going on here? Did they all go to the Zohran Mamdani School of Financing?
The new mayor campaigned on spending lavishly on new programs, despite the fact that the city was facing an enormous deficit. He started to look under every rock so that he could impose another tax.
Not once did he suggest controlling spending and eliminating wasteful items. We don’t see many Suffolk towns doing that, either.
The county government and the towns in Nassau are primarily Republican-controlled. They’ve been doing a fine job keeping taxes under control over the last few years. In Suffolk, however, we see taxes are going up at the county and town levels, run by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
Republicans in Islip and Smithtown raised taxes by 8% and 11%, respectively. The Democratic-controlled town of Southampton also hiked taxes 8% this past year.
We don’t get it. If Nassau County government and the towns in Nassau can hold the line, why can’t both Democrats and Republicans in Suffolk do the same?