Back from my vacation, and from the after vacation pile on my desk, mostly rested and ready to blog again…Someone sent me a copy of Appellate Division decision on the FAIR Plan — the School Districts vs. Monroe County. A 5 to 0 decision that the County was wrong…hard to appeal that to the Court of Appeals. When I read that decision two things struck me. One were the words the Court used to say that what the County tried to do was “shift a portion of its Medicaid obligation to the sharing municipalities and the school districts” something the Democrats argued against all along. And now something the Courts said they cannot do. A court comprised of Appellate Division Judges not from Monroe County, removed from the fray. The other thing that struck me was this, because of the County Republican’s short sightedness and arrogance at enacting the Intercept, in light of legitimate concerns raised they now are in a huge bind. The need to come up with 29 million dollars AND they are stuck with the intercept forever, AND with keeping every sharing partner whole. Imagine that, the Democratic Caucus was right. Imagine that, the taxpayers are screwed once again by this Republican Administration and Republican controlled Legislature.
Tags: Decisionnow, FAIR
Wait. . .
So even though the F.A.I.R. plan is illegal, they’re still stuck with the intercept plan? I was actually beginning to think that this was a fortuitous change for the county, since the intercept plan seems to have fallen on the wrong side of the original intercept bet, meaning that they lost more sales tax revenues than the intercept would have allowed them to make up.
Please, enlighten us!!
They are stuck with the intercept. And they have to keep everyone whole meaning that the sharing partners have to get the share of the sales tax they would have gotten had the County not elected the Intercept. I haven’ t seen the numbers for this year so its hard for me to say whether the intercept in and of itself was better than a straight up calculation tied to the sales tax revenue; i.e. the existing Cap. Here is the real problem — County Executive balanced her budget ASSUMING she didnt have to pay the school districts their share, now its totally out of whack.