NORWICH – Sales tax collections in Chenango County dropped 12.5 percent, or $825,000, for the second quarter of 2009.
The figure compares to January through March results when only $30, or less than six percent, was lost compared to the same time period a year ago.
County Treasurer William B. Evans characterized the results as “no good news” for the county.
Neighboring counties were also off, with Delaware down 12.3 percent; Cortland, 6.7; and Otsego 6.5. Both Broome and Madison counties were down only 2.9 percent.
“If we stay on this track, we are going to get beat up on our margin,” Evans told members of the county’s Finance Committee at a meeting Thursday at the County Office Building on Court Street. The treasurer said the county currently carries a $556,000 margin, off from the $1 million carried in recent years.
Determining what sectors are to blame for fewer receipts has been difficult. Evans said a veil of “secrecy” protects vendors from having to disclose figures per district.
“Vendors don’t want to have people have the ability to back into what the sales are,” he said.
Evans said he and Town of Sherburne Supervisor Harry Conley have been trying to determine if sales tax collected from purchases at Lowe’s, located on state Rt. 12 in the Town of Norwich, has been appropriately flowing throughout the county.
“Harry has been working on that for months. ... It could be a jurisdictional possibility that the money is being credited to Norwich only, and not outside. Once I asked about it, they weren’t able to convince me otherwise,” he said.
In addition, unemployment insurance paid out to former county employees has exceeded the amount budgeted for the year by nearly $7,000. Evans said he suspected the lay-offs were the result of staffing cuts in the codes department last year.
Department of Social Services Director Bette Osborne said despite higher caseloads across the board, her department is “in pretty good shape,” however, and “looks promising” for next year. DSS is on target after the first half of the year, with just shy of 50 percent expended of the $24 million budgeted.
Help has come from the federal government in the form of $1.3 million in federal stimulus through September 2010. Osborne said the money will be reported as surplus in the department’s budget for Medicaid.
Finance Committee Vice Chairman Dennis Brown, D-Pharsalia, suggested transferring the influx into the county’s general fund to provide tax relief for residents.
“We have to decide how best to do that for our local taxpayers. Look, there’s roughly a $7 billion deficit in this state. Where are they going to get it?” he asked.
Evans said he has been “going blind” trying to figure out how the stimulus money is flowing into the county, and undocumented spending of it could result in having to pay it back.
Chairman of the Board Richard Decker, R-N. Norwich, explained that the reporting requirements “keep changing.”
“They are looking to trip you up,” he said.
Stimulus was recently used to purchase body armor for officers in public safety and probation.
“Many counties are approaching the time where they may have to tell the state to keep funds and programs and let us do the things we are better at anyway, like roads, bridges and things like that,” said Evans.
Both food stamps and Medicaid caseloads are up about 600 cases from June of 2008. Cash assistance went to 66 more families, food emergency to 163 more, and home heating assistance to up 1,000 more over the same time period last year.
Osborne warned the committee that overtime hours were up as well.