Should sales tax revenues set aside for Suffolk’s environmental protection programs be diverted to help plug a huge — and growing — hole in the county’s budget?
A showdown on that question is coming in the county legislature this summer and the battle is already heating up, with County Executive Steve Bellone yesterday calling Richard Amper of the Long Island Pine Barrens Society a liar — and the heads of environmental groups opposed to his proposals “a small group of professional advocates…focused on their narrow concerns.”
Bellone proposed a pair of resolutions in April to put two propositions before voters in November aimed, he says, to help address the county’s “fiscal emergency” created by the COVID-19 crisis by diverting to the county’s general fund sales tax revenues dedicated by county charter to environmental protection .
The county executive yesterday, at the end of a press conference, lashed out at Amper and other environmental advocates who have spoken out against his proposals.
Bellone called their opposition “callous and tone deaf to an astonishing degree.”
He also slammed legislators who oppose putting his proposals on the ballot in November, though he didn’t name any names.
“It’s one thing for professional advocates like Dick Amper to sit up in an ivory tower and say, ‘Don’t touch my program. You can just tax people, you can just lay people off.’ It’s another thing for legislators who have a responsibility to actually address this problem to say that,” Bellone said.
Bellone says his proposed measures would generate $50 million a year for the general fund over the next three years.
“For perspective, the county tax would have to be increased by 107% — a 107% property tax increase, to get us that $50 million,” he said. In the alternative, “700 employees would have to be laid off to get you $50 million” or the county would have to “eliminate all funding for contract agencies — 100% of funding for contract agencies that provide mental health services, addiction recovery services, support for domestic violence victims, anti-gang initiatives, among many others,” he said.
Plugging ‘holes in a budget they can’t balance’
Amper dismissed Bellone’s salvos. The county is attempting “steal money intended for clean water an open space to plug holes in a budget they can’t balance,” Amper said in an interview yesterday.
“Suffolk voters have put up $2 billion over the last 27 years and protected acre after acre. They won’t stand for this,” he said.
The courts won’t either, Amper said.
“The County of Suffolk has stolen money from the drinking protection program four times,” he said. “Every court up to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, has told the county they’re not allowed to do that and have to put the money back into the environmental lock box that the voters placed it in,” Amper said.
The Pine Barrens Society, the L.I. Environmental Voters Forum and others mounted a successful legal challenge to the county’s removal, in 2011, of nearly $30 million from the Drinking Water Protection Program fund without voter approval. That action was taken during the administration of Bellone’s predecessor, Steve Levy, but defended by the Bellone administration over nearly nine years of litigation.
The Pine Barrens Society, Amper said, is not alone in its opposition to Bellone’s ballot proposals. The Nature Conservancy, Group for the East End, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, North Fork Environmental Council, Save the Sound, Peconic Baykeeper, Defend H20 and others all stand together in opposition.
‘You gotta pass the laugh test’
“The basic problem here is pretty simple,” Group for the East End president Robert DeLuca said in an interview yesterday.
“Thirty-two percent of the Drinking Water Protection Program fund goes for tax stabilization every year. So far that fund has given $300 million to tax stabilization, right off the top, since 2007,” DeLuca said.
In addition, 84 positions in county government — at a cost of $8 million — are paid for out of the fund, DeLuca said.
A June 30 legislative budget review office memo states that the Drinking Water Protection Program currently funds 86 positions in county government — in the departments of health, public works, parks and economic development and planning. Four were vacant as of June 14.
The memo says the fund provided $307 million in transfers to the general fund for taxpayer relief from 2008 to the current year, when a $28.8 million transfer was budgeted.
In addition, from 2014 to 2017, the county borrowed $171.3 million from the Drinking Water Protection Program fund for the general fund, pursuant to a proposition approved by voters in 2013. The county began paying back the debt in 2018 and, according to the budget review office, still owes the environmental fund more than $140 million, which it is obligated to repay by Dec. 31, 2029.
“That’s the basic point. This fund has already given and continues to give to budget relief,” DeLuca said. “At some point you’ve whittled it down so far that it ceases to be a viable environmental program.”
The county’s budget problems predate the COVID crisis, DeLuca said.
“You gotta pass the laugh test here,” he said.
“We’ve got a $700 million police budget. All we want is equity. You’ve got to sit down and open up the whole thing. You’ve got to deal with the police issue,” he said.
“They’re in this problem because of reliance on sales tax to fund the government,” DeLuca said. “The county tax bills do not reflect the expense of running government.”
‘Living with the legacy of past borrowing’
North Fork Legislator Al Krupski said reallocating funds away from the Drinking Water Protection Program “threatens the integrity of the program” because the county is “living with the legacy of past borrowing.”
“Past actions by previous county executives and legislators in borrowing from the money set-aside for land preservation, requires that roughly two-thirds of the money collected pay debt service on prior borrowing,” Krupski said in a statement.
“This reality leaves us with very little money to buy open space and preserve farmland in the whole county. Currently we have zero dollars to make offers on any property and are awaiting the release of the 2019 allocations,” he said.
“This is not a robust program.”
Krupski noted that county sales tax revenues have suffered significant shortfalls due to the coronavirus shutdown. He said he is worried the remaining income will not even cover the annual $15.5 million debt service.
“Calculations show a projected deficit for 2020 of $1.3 million. So reallocating this limited income away from land preservation in 2020 threatens the integrity of the program,” Krupski said.
Bellone has offered two proposed charter amendments.
One measure would authorize the transfer of $15 million from the sewer tax stabilization fund to the general fund, cancel the repayment of $29.4 million to the fund, as required by court order, and repeal county charter provisions requiring the scheduled repayment to the sewer fund, pursuant to the settlement of additional litigation, of an estimated $145 million between 2021 and 2029.
The other would reduce the amounts required to be allocated to the county’s environmental programs trust fund and increase the amounts allocated to the taxpayer trust fund.
The money in question is generated by a special quarter-percent sales tax first authorized by the state and approved by voters in 1987 and subsequently extended by voters through Nov. 30, 2030. The most recent version of the program was enacted in 2007.
Just over 31% of the quarter-percent sales tax revenue generated each calendar year goes to the environmental trust fund.
A little over 32% is required to be paid into a Suffolk County Taxpayers Trust Fund. In practice, the budget review office said, funds are transferred to the general fund, which lessens the burden on taxpayers. This revenue funds a portion of all General Fund expenditures, so there is no “cumulative balance,” according to the budget review office.
Twenty-five percent of the sales tax revenue is allocated to the sewer tax stabilization fund.
Another 11.75% of the revenue is allocated to stormwater management and pollution prevention.
“Environmentalists don’t support anti-environmental initiatives,” said Adrienne Esposito of Citizens Campaign for the Environment said.
“Environmental protection isn’t a luxury item. It’s a necessity.
We have to stop treating it like something we can dispense with,” Esposito said. “We’re saddened the county executive hasn’t gotten the message that protecting the environment is protecting the economy.”
‘We’ll fund open space projects dollar for dollar’
Bellone argues that his proposals “fully protect environmental programs.”
He said his proposal to reduce funding for the environmental trust fund would “fund open space purchases dollar for dollar through the capital program for three years.”
DeLuca contended that would not happen.
“Don’t kid me that you’re going to put it in the capital budget and actually spend it,” DeLuca said. “Will it actually be there? They’ll have to bond it. The legislature would have to vote to approve the borrowing. Who is going to vote to borrow that money?”
The county will bond it if the money isn’t in the capital budget, Bellone said, arguing that the county’s debt burden is not excessive, as some critics have asserted.
The environmental advocates also complain that the language of the ballot propositions is not clear.
“It needs to be clear about what is actually going on if you want the public to vote on it,” DeLuca said.
The next meeting of the county legislature is scheduled for July 21.
Editor’s note: This story has been amended to clarify the language describing IR 1414, pertaining to the sewer assessment stabilization fund.
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