Lohud: Hudson Valley Families Could See Tax Hikes Thanks to Mike Lawler’s Big, Ugly Bill

Recent reporting from Lohud reveals that counties across New York are being forced to absorb $168 million in new expenses to accommodate Lawler’s historic cuts to food assistance. As a result, counties like Rockland and Westchester have no choice but to consider “raising taxes, cutting other services or putting further strain on their social service offices.”

What’s worse? One official warned that counties might have to “bypass the state’s 2% limit on property-tax increases so they could go higher” to counter SNAP cost increases — leaving thousands of families to pay more for groceries on top of incoming tax hikes.

REMINDER: These tax hikes are a DIRECT result of Lawler’s vote threatening to rip food off the tables of more than 18,000 NY-17 households, all to give billionaires and big corporations more tax breaks.

DCCC Spokesperson Riya Vashi:
“Mike Lawler’s cruelty knows no end. As if ripping food off of families’ tables wasn’t enough, Lawler is now forcing those same families to absorb the cost. Hudson Valley families can’t afford Mike Lawler, and they’ll kick him to the curb in November.”

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Lohud: How Republicans’ SNAP cost shift could increase property taxes in NY

• County officials across New York are putting together their 2027 budgets while grappling with a cost hike imposed by Washington that makes it harder to avoid or minimize property-tax increases.
• As part of last year’s federal tax and spending cuts, Republicans in Congress and President Donald Trump forced states to take on a greater share of the cost of running the SNAP food aid program. And in New York, that means New York City and the 57 counties outside the city must absorb an estimated $168 million a year in new administrative expenses, starting Oct. 1.
• New York counties bracing for that hit — and a bigger SNAP cost shift set to come next year — have been urging Congress to delay it for two years so they can prepare. But with no immediate prospect of that happening, they are readying their budgets with added SNAP expenses that will cost several million dollars per year in the state’s biggest counties.
• “On Oct. 1 in Westchester County, we have a 1% tax increase coming to us because of H.R. 1, because of SNAP cuts and the administration,” [County Executive Ken Jenkins] told a crowd in Tarrytown on Sept. 16 at the rally for Democratic House candidate Cait Conley.
• The New York State Association of Counties sounded the alarm about the looming cost shift with a report detailing the estimated impact for each county. Among the largest increases:
  • Westchester County, $4.5 million
  • Rockland County, $2.2 million
• “Whatever the law is, we will implement that law,” Stephen Acquario, executive director of the counties association, told the USA TODAY Network in an interview. “But it will come at a cost.”
• The cost shift poses a permanent budget increase for counties, which already are strapped by federal and state mandates and other challenges, the counties association noted in its report. Their recourses, it said, include raising taxes, cutting other services or putting further strain on their social service offices.
• Last year, 12 New York counties bypassed the state’s 2% limit on property-tax increases so they could go higher, an unusual flurry of overrides that Acquario attributed to inflation-driven cost increases. He warned that feat could be repeated or exceeded this fall due to the SNAP cost increase, while stressing that tax hikes are a last resort.