Suffolk: State’s Late Payments Hurt Local Governments

Suffolk : State’s Late Payments Hurt Local Governments

County Executive Levy Implores State Lawmakers to Meet Fiscal Requirements in a Timely Manner

Hauppauge , NY – According to Suffolk officials, the New York State government has failed to pay almost $100 million in revenues due to Suffolk County over the past year. County Executive Steve Levy termed the lack of payment as “a major drain on our county budget that requires us to waste money on higher interest payments due to excessive borrowings we must effectuate to make up for this lost money from the state that is past due.”

Levy said the lack of payment has caused cash flow problems for Suffolk and other counties around the state.

“While we have been able to make our payments to our employees and various agencies, it is becoming more and more difficult to do so, while the state holds back on this massive amount of money that we normally would have received earlier in the year,” Levy said. “At some point, if this money does not come forward as budgeted, the cash flow problems for counties will reach a crisis level.”

Levy noted that while the county has a mandated requirement to provide payments to day care providers within 30 days, the state has been behind as much as 180 days in paying Suffolk County’s claims. Further exacerbating the cash flow problem, he added, is the state abandoning a long-standing practice to provide advance funding to localities for program and administrative expenses.

Despite this lack of revenue coming from the state, Suffolk County has been able to control taxes.

“We have now had six straight years of budgets without general fund tax increases,” Levy said. “Even during the last two years of sharp fiscal decline we have maintained tax freezes. We avoided raising taxes even while we kept our contract agencies whole, and maintaining our services for the needy. While various states and municipalities around the nation are raising taxes significantly, laying off large numbers of employees, cutting programs significantly, and even, as in the case of California, letting prisoners out of jail to save money, Suffolk County has not had to resort to any of these draconian measures.”