Bellone: Attacks on tax record misleading

Suffolk Republicans are criticizing the Democratic candidate for county executive, Steve Bellone, in thousands of automated phone calls and on a party website -- describing the Babylon Town supervisor as "Big Tax Bellone" and the official responsible for "crippling tax increases" that have "broken the backs of residents."

Bellone accuses the GOP of using "bogus" and misleading data and says that he's cut taxes by $4.3 million since becoming supervisor in 2002.

"The reality is if you look at my tax record as supervisor, we've kept taxes really low during my tenure," Bellone said.

To try to sort out the charges and countercharges, Newsday examined tax bills and records supplied by the town. At the newspaper's request, Suffolk's nonpartisan Office of Legislative Budget Review also analyzed Babylon's tax history during Bellone's tenure.

The GOP attack on Bellone's tax policies, which started in the spring, makes three key assertions:

Babylon residents pay the highest taxes in Suffolk.

Taxes in the general fund, which pays for services including parks and recreation, have risen 79 percent since Bellone voted on his first budget as a councilman.

Bellone plays a "shell game" to hold down general fund taxes while allowing levies for garbage, highways and other services to climb.

"This guy's actually running for office saying he's cutting taxes," Suffolk Republican chairman John Jay LaValle said. "He's running the highest-taxed town per capita in Suffolk County."

Bellone says Republicans improperly consider school taxes -- which account for 60 percent of the average property tax bill on Long Island and are approved by voters -- when he has no influence over them. He says it's unfair to include his years on the five-member town council, from 1997 to 2001, in evaluating taxes. The council must vote on the budget that the supervisor presents.

He concedes there have been increases in taxes for the town garbage and highway funds, but says the money went to improving Babylon's roads and expanding the town ashfill.

The GOP's county executive candidate, Angie Carpenter, currently the Suffolk treasurer, declined to comment on the information on the GOP's anti-Bellone website, saying she didn't have "anything to do with it."

Carpenter did lend her voice to one set of Republican automated calls, directing voters to the website. She said she did that because, "I support people having information if it's accurate."

During a news conference last week, Carpenter attacked Bellone's record on taxes.

Highest-taxed town?In dollar terms, Babylon ranks as one of the lowest among Suffolk's 10 towns in average residential town tax bills, according to an analysis by Suffolk's Office of Legislative Budget Review.

Deputy director Robert Lipp said that each year from 2003, the year of Bellone's first proposed budget, to 2011, Babylon was either the third or fourth-lowest Suffolk town in average residential town tax bills. Brookhaven and Islip typically came in lower, while East Hampton and Shelter Island were the highest.

Since Bellone became supervisor, Babylon property taxes have risen an average of 1.3 percent per year -- the lowest rate of increase of any Suffolk town, Lipp said.

LaValle, in arguing that Babylon is the most heavily taxed town in the county, points to a study released in May by the conservative Empire Center for New York State Policy. It surveyed school taxes -- the largest portion of residents' tax bills, but which the town does not control -- as part of its analysis of local property tax burdens statewide.

The Empire study, based on state comptroller's data, said residents living in the Babylon School District -- with 1,800 students, the smallest of eight school districts in the town -- had the highest "effective tax rate" in Suffolk in 2010.

The center calculated that rate by comparing total property tax bills to property values. Of the $26.35 tax rate per $1,000 of home value cited by the study, $1.90 comes from town taxes, and the bulk of the rest -- about $20 -- from school taxes. "It's overwhelmingly the school district that's driving the taxes," said the center's senior fellow, E.J. McMahon.

Bellone dismissed the study, saying it used a "bogus formula" that "doesn't relate to the town. It relates to the school district in the town."

In Bellone's campaign ads, he touts a total reduction in town taxes of $4.3 million since he became supervisor. That cut represents the difference in taxes for only one year, from 2010 to 2011.

LaValle said an examination of Bellone's tax record should begin in 1998 because that's when he began voting on town budgets as a councilman.

Bellone contended that the focus should be on budgets he oversaw as supervisor, starting with the 2003 spending plan.

"Those weren't my budgets," Bellone said of the earlier spending plans. "I didn't prepare those budgets and I wasn't chief fiscal officer of the town."

Since 1998, total town taxes -- made up of the general, highway, garbage, street lighting and part-town funds -- have gone up 51 percent, from an average of $739 to $1,114. Since 2003, they have increased 16 percent; Bellone notes that figure is less than the cumulative rate of inflation for the period -- 21.2 percent -- as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

General fund taxesNewsday's review of town tax records shows that general fund taxes for the average Babylon household increased 108 percent -- from $166 to $346 for the average household -- since Bellone voted on the 1999 budget, his first as a council member. The largest rises came in the budgets for 1999 (9 percent), 2001 (38 percent), 2002 (9 percent), 2009 (9 percent) and in 2011 (13 percent).

LaValle said he arrived at his tally of a 79 percent increase in general fund taxes beginning in 1999 through town tax bills and from information gathered by the now-defunct campaign of County Executive Steve Levy, a Republican, after Levy announced he would not seek re-election.

Levy said he had no hand in gathering the information but that a paid member of his campaign staff compiled the data through tax bills.

When told by a Newsday reporter that the 79 percent figure was inaccurately calculated, LaValle said Thursday he had his staff compile new information from a Deer Park resident's tax bills. The new numbers are closer to Newsday's figures and LaValle now says the earlier information that had been used in a Republican ad is incorrect.

The website attacking Bellone also has been updated.

Shell game or investment?Newsday examined the town's three largest tax funds -- general, highway and residential refuse -- for 2003-2011.

Bellone was a candidate when he proposed the budgets for 2004, 2006 and 2010. (The term of office changed from two to four years in 2005). In each of those years, general, highway and garbage fund taxes remained essentially flat. The same was true in the 2003 budget, a non-election year.

In the non-election year budgets for 2005, 2007 and 2008, general fund taxes again remained essentially flat -- rising by an average of $1.50 in 2005, $1.18 in 2007, and 95 cents in 2008. Highway taxes rose 18 percent in 2005, an average of $32 per household; 20 percent in 2007 ($42) and 8 percent in 2008 ($20). Garbage taxes were flat in 2005 and 2008 but rose by 10 percent in 2007, or $45 per household. In the non-election year 2009 budget, general taxes increased 9 percent, from an average of $280 to $307, and highway taxes rose 18 percent ($49).

LaValle says Bellone's strategy, particularly in election years, has been to tout freezes in general taxes but downplay other hikes.

Bellone called the argument "false on its face," and defended the increases -- such as a 79 percent rise in average highway taxes since 2003, from $179 to $321 -- saying they helped pay for infrastructure projects, including a more than $50-million multiyear road reconstruction program.

"Residents are not concerned with what fund is going up and what fund is going down, but how efficient their government is and what they're getting for their money," Bellone said.

LaValle and other Republicans also point to Bellone's most recent budget, for 2011. Bellone touted an overall 5 percent tax cut, from $1,176.47 to $1,113.94 -- on average per household. The general fund tax rose 13 percent from an average of $305 to $346. That was offset by a 20 percent drop in garbage fund taxes, from $499 to $398 on average. Officials achieved the decrease by dipping into a garbage fund surplus.

LaValle takes issue with the existence of the garbage fund surplus. He points to the state comptroller's most recent audit of the town, in 2009, which pegged the value of the surplus at almost $30 million. From 2001 to 2007, Babylon underestimated revenue from refuse and garbage fees and overestimated expenditures by an average of $3.1 million per year, Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli said.

"The town is overstating its need for garbage fees," the audit said. "Not enough excess fund balance is being returned to the taxpayers."

Bellone said at the time that the surplus was needed to finance garbage projects, including expansion of the town ashfill. Bellone says the surplus developed from renegotiating contracts with municipalities and rebidding contracts with garbage haulers, as well as forcing owners of houses with illegal apartments to pay multifamily refuse rates.

But LaValle maintains that Bellone is still raising taxes unnecessarily.

"Instead of just giving residents their 20 percent garbage tax cut, he sees it as an opportunity to jack up the general tax fund," he said.