Localities see chance for mandate relief

As local officials tell it, this is the moment for state mandate relief -- a time-battered phrase best defined as getting government off the backs of smaller governments.

Mark Lavigne, spokesman for the state's Association of Counties, contends that 2012 should be big for relieving mandates. He notes that lawmakers voted last year to impose a 2 percent cap on property tax increases, and as they did so, many declared that the state now had to stop making counties, villages, towns, cities and school districts pay for things that the localities might choose to cut if not for state requirements.

"They (the legislators) set it up that way," Lavigne said. "Now it's time for mandate relief to be the top Albany priority for 2012."

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is expected to raise this basic, if less-than-racy, topic Wednesday in his annual State of the State address. Later this month, Cuomo's preliminary Mandate Relief Redesign Team, which issued a long list of possible relief measures in a report, gives way to a new Mandate Relief Council. According to the report's introduction last month by Lawrence Schwartz, secretary to the governor, the council will be "reviewing and referring statutory and regulatory unfunded mandates to the Legislature and to Executive agencies for modification or repeal."

One suggestion from this team that local governments and school districts are sure to support is a ban on further unfunded mandates, first by statute, and later, by constitutional amendment. Cuomo's relief team estimates that $125 million worth of relief measures were enacted last year, while another $245 million worth of them were proposed but fell short of legislative approval.

The relief measures as enacted so far include easing up on the kind of little-publicized rules that may have been properly enacted but were deemed to add costs. School districts must take a census of pre-K children once every two years now, instead of annually. Statutory salary requirements for municipal chiefs of police were removed. Counties were authorized to make child care subsidy payments electronically for the first time.

Of course, municipal governments and school districts want much bigger mandates relieved. The counties still seek what for decades has become a fiscal holy grail: A full state pickup of Medicaid costs.

They cite pensions as the other big mandated burden.

Two years ago the state introduced a cheaper pension plan. Under the Tier 5 plan, most public employees must work 10 full years to vest in the system, rather than the previous five. Also, the amount of overtime that can be used in calculating final average salary was capped. Signed into law by Gov. David A. Paterson, this was aimed to save governments $48 billion over 30 years.

For his part, Kevin Law, president and chief executive of the Long Island Association, says that because school districts claim so much of local property tax bills for residents and businesses, relief of their mandates could deliver the "biggest bang" on Long Island.

Mandates have accumulated for decades. "To think we can undo all of it in the first year is ridiculous," Law said. But he added that some help is needed for districts, villages and towns to comply with the statewide cap on tax increases. Law called it a "serious opportunity."