When Albany imposes unfunded mandates, the results are often disastrous. Local governments cannot balance their budgets and they are strong-armed into raising property taxes. Medicaid is the most burdensome of all these mandates. Assemblyman Finch and his colleagues are working hard to right this wrong.

The Assembly Minority Plan

The Assembly Minority plan is based on a phased-in, five-year state takeover of local Medicaid costs. The five-year plan would be financed by exchanging up to 1 percent of each county’s local sales tax revenue for the state taking over each county’s full share of Medicaid costs. In most upstate counties, the Medicaid costs far exceed 1 percent of the sales tax, so the state would pick up the balance. The proposal would make it impossible for counties to ever raise property taxes due to Medicaid expenses.