CHENANGO COUNTY – A call for New York State to restructure its Medicaid program is likely to appear as a resolution before the Chenango County Board of Supervisors at the board’s meeting in November.
A drafted resolution urging the restructuring of New York’s Medicaid program made its way to the table of the county’s Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee last week. The draft stresses the impact that the state-facilited program has on Chenango’s local tax base, particularly farmers in the area.
The draft further notes that New York has the most expensive Medicaid program in the United States, but the state’s rural counties have lower per capita incomes to pay local Medicaid share. It also cites a disproportionate tax burden on economically disadvantaged rural counties to foot the local share for Medicaid.
Cornell Cooperative Extension Executive Director Ken Smith presented the draft resolution to committee members, saying that on a long list of unfunded mandates to the county, Medicaid has the greatest burdon for landowners.
“When you ask people to pay unfunded mandates and most of their way of doing that is through property tax, you’re basically creating a system that is disadvantageous to property owners,” Smith said.
Smith cites data from the Office of the New York State Comptroller that puts Chenango among some of the lowest income per capita in the state and among some of the highest Medicaid cost per capita. When that’s combined with lackluster real estate and sales tax values, he said it becomes difficult for Chenango County taxpayers to foot the high local share of Medicaid costs.
Other counties, including Putnam, Tompkins, and Saratoga (where incomes are higher and there’s less per capita cost for Medicaid) fair much better in terms of what taxpayers dole out for Medicaid.
“Realistically, if you’re a large landowner and have a dairy farm of about 400 acres in Chenango County, you’re just going have to pay a much higher percentage of that local share than a person who is in a single development home on a single acre in the county,” Smith said. “That’s a common scenario across most upstate rural counties.”
In an effort to provide tax relief to large landowners, the state Department of Environmental Conservation does offer the 480-a Forest Tax Law – a program that gives tax credits to landowners who meet certain woodland management practices. But the draft resolution that went before the county’s Ag, Buildings and Grounds Committee says that program is just not feasible for many farmers and landowners because the requirements are too restrictive.
Said Smith, “It’s all these different layers that create an unfair scenario that systematically puts rural upstate New Yorkers at an economic disadvantage, particularly as it applies to this large unfunded mandate of Medicaid.”
The draft resolution was also presented to the Chenango County Farm Bureau at its annual meeting held last week. The Farm Bureau serves as the voice between local farmers and legislators in Albany and Washington.