If you own a house in Eden or Brant, you already know what your property tax bill looks like. You pay it. Your neighbors pay it. The volunteer fire company, the plow that comes down your road in February, the deputy who shows up: that is what it pays for.
Some property doesn’t pay. Churches don’t. Schools don’t. The courthouse doesn’t. Nobody in this district is arguing about that, and neither am I.
But there is another kind of property that skips the bill, and it works differently.
A business comes to the county with an offer. Let me skip my property taxes, and I will build here and hire your neighbors. The county says yes. That is a trade. The business gets something real on day one. The county is supposed to get something real back.
Right now, about $1.99 billion worth of property in Erie County sits in deals like that.
The county keeps careful records of what those deals cost. The number is printed in the back of the adopted county budget, down to the dollar.
There is no matching record of what they bought. No annual report on how many jobs were promised. No report on how many actually showed up. No report on what happens when they don’t.
The county cut the deal. The business made the promise. Nobody ever went back to check.
Let me get ahead of something
You are going to hear that I’m exaggerating this, so here it is straight.
The share of Erie County property that skips taxes has been going down a little for three years running. About 18.5 percent, then 17.7, then 17.4. There is no flood of new giveaways. That is not the problem, and I am not going to pretend it is.
The problem is narrower and, to me, worse. We know exactly what we paid. We have no idea what we got.
Why that is hard to sit with
Last fall, for the first time in more than ten years, Erie County put families on a waiting list for child care assistance. By this spring there were more than three hundred families on it.
In January, the state offered $20 million to counties that could put up a 10 percent match. Erie County passed. It could not find the $2 million.
At the close of that same year, the county’s audited books showed $149.6 million in unassigned fund balance. Money in the bank, not committed to anything in particular.
I am not going to tell you those are the same pot of money, because they are not. Different rules, different accounts, and anyone who tells you it is a simple transfer is selling you something.
But they are all decisions. Somebody chose, every time. And only one of those choices comes with an annual report attached.
What I would do
1. Check every year, and publish it. For every business tax break: jobs promised, jobs that exist today, total relief granted so far. One page per deal. Post it where anyone can read it. When a project misses badly, the county should take the deal back. That power already exists on paper. It just doesn’t get used. And any new agreement should carry a real minimum payment, not a token one.
2. Use the rules already on the books. Business exemptions under section 485-b are supposed to shrink a little every year and eventually end. That only happens if somebody is watching. The county should review them on a set schedule and clear the expired ones off the rolls.
3. Have the conversation with the big institutions. Our largest hospitals and universities hold billions in exempt property. Other places have worked this out. Syracuse University’s agreement with its city brings in $11 million over five years. Cornell has had an arrangement with Ithaca for years. This is not about taxing the church down the road or the food pantry. It is about the biggest institutions paying something toward the roads and water lines they use.
4. Put what we recover back into families. Child care first, then property tax relief.
The principle
Tax breaks exist to serve the public. When they do that, they are worth every dollar and I will defend them.
When nobody checks, they are just a bill your neighbors pay instead.
Every exemption should earn its keep. And you should be able to see whether it does.