Slater’s Fuzzy Logic in His New York State Fiscal Analysis
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In the June 16 Yorktown News, Assembly candidate and Yorktown Supervisor Matt Slater offered his commentary on what he wrongly perceives to be a New York State spending crisis. He ignores the fact that this money represents an influx of new federal infrastructure and American Recovery Act funding.
According to a New York Times article in March “By some estimates, more than $270 billion has moved from Washington to New York through a series of pandemic relief and stimulus bills since the pandemic began.”
In 2021, it was announced by the federal government that New York State was scheduled to receive about $12.7 billion of aid from the American Rescue Plan and another $30 billion from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over the next five years. Could Mr. Slater possibly be suggesting that we forgo the opportunity to improve, modernize and repair our aging highway and transportation systems? Is he saying that federal funds are being misspent?
No. Mr. Slater hasn’t complained about Yorktown receiving its fair share of New York State’s federal grant money.
“The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) was signed into law on March 11, 2021 and provides aid to State, County, and Local governments affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The Town of Yorktown will receive a total of approximately $3.7 million in aid in two equal tranches (portions).”
This quote was taken from the Yorktown Town website.
Mr. Slater has only complained about the New York State budget since becoming a candidate for Assembly. He’s following the same script as nearly every Republican candidate for state office.
Is this the kind of contradictory, obstructionist and backwards thinking he will bring to Albany?
His population change forecasts are also misleading. The 2020 census, which offers the most reliable population count, shows that New York State actually gained in population by 823,000 from 2010 to 2020. Mr. Slater’s unofficial estimate of a 238,000 loss between 2020 and 2021 does not account for short-term variations that may have been caused by the pandemic and other factors.
Even with the reduction in 2021 the state’s population has grown by nearly 600,000 in the past decade. Mr. Slater further ignores that housing demand is up partially due to population growth, and that the state’s unemployment rate has fallen to 3.2 percent.
Mr. Slater may, in his partisan manner, blame inflation on the current administration in Washington; however, inflation is an international problem. Inflation is the result of supply chain shortages due to oil refinery and manufacturing reductions during the pandemic, the Trump tariffs on China (according to the United Nations the source of nearly 30 percent of all manufacturing output), followed by the war in Ukraine, which have all combined to create this crisis. The support by Mr. Slater for Ukraine in an unfair invasion by Russia is appreciated.
Finally, in terms of middle-class tax relief, many families received the Homeowner Tax Rebate Credit (HTRC), a one-year program providing direct property tax relief to about 2.5 million eligible homeowners this year. For some homeowners this amounted to a 20 to 25 percent reduction of their property tax burden.
That is just one of the programs for which we can credit Gov. Hochal and the current Democratic majority in Albany. The share of the overall tax burden by filers earning $50,000 or less dropped by 41 percent. The share of the overall tax burden by filers earning $100,000 or less dropped by 27 percent.
As this campaign moves forward, let’s hope that more candidates address fundamental issues and the challenges that we are all facing using facts, without relying on talking points that follow the basic rhetoric of their chosen political parties.
Andrea Black Jeffries
Yorktown
