View my portfolio
How do I USE this site?
Expenditures and Revenues
Local government on Long Island is big business and continues to grow above the rate of inflation. While the population on Long Island grew 3%, metro New York inflation grew 30%, total local government expenditures grew 57% and total property tax levies grew 64%.
Last Updated 2012
Why is this important?
Local government on Long Island is big business. In 2009, local governments (which include counties, cities, towns, villages, school districts, fire districts and special districts that are governed by separate boards elected by the public) spent nearly $ 23.4 billion. To support this level of expenditures, local governments had to levy almost $ 9.9 billion in property taxes. A ten-year history of local government expenditures and revenues, and comparable figures for local governments and school districts, allows Long Islanders to evaluate whether or not efforts to mitigate growth in the cost of local government have been effective.
How are we doing?
In order to understand how the aggregate costs of local governments on Long Island have changed over the last ten years, publicly available expenditure and revenue data collected by the New York State Office of State Comptroller (OSC) for the years 2000 through 2009 (the latest full year available) were analyzed.
The OSC data provide the best readily available public data for analyzing local government expenditure and revenue patterns and trends. Response differences make the data less useful for specific comparisons among individual governments, however, in the aggregate, the numbers provide enough information to paint a useful picture for describing the size and scope of local governments and how this changes over time.
In aggregate, total local government expenditures totaled $23.389 billion in 2009. School district and county governments accounted for 80% of total expenditures.
TABLE 1 (below) shows the breakdown by type of government.
Over the ten year period from 2000 to 2009, the cost of local government grew significantly faster than the growth in population on Long Island, and inflation. Specifically:
a. The population on Long Island grew 3%
b. Metro New York Inflation grew 30%
c. Total local government expenditures grew 57%
d. Total property tax levies grew 64%
TABLE 2 (above, left) shows the rates of growth of each of these four characteristics based upon a starting index number of 1 in 2000. [Note: Changes over time are compared to a starting index of 1 for the year 2000. Comparing changes against an index provides a clearer picture than comparing raw numbers.]
Over the same ten years that property tax levies were going up 64%, the full values of properties increased by 155%. Thus, the growth in property values exceeded the growth in property taxes.
The bottom line on TABLE 3 (above right) shows how growth in real property values increased at a much faster rate than the other comparative data shown in TABLE 2.
However, it is important to recognize that property wealth is illiquid. Property taxes need to be paid with liquid funds. Property taxes growing over 20 times faster than the consumer price index places an unbalanced burden on the cash resources of property tax payers who have to live on incomes that are fixed or only growing slowly.
Local property taxes provide the predominant source of funding for local governments on Long Island. TABLE 4 (above, left) shows that for the last ten years, property taxes have provided between 38.2% to 41.9% of the revenues for local governments. Unless other sources of revenues can be increased, local governments face a serious revenue shortfall if the growth of property taxes is slowed down or reversed.
Not all governments grew at the same rates over the last ten years. While aggregate spending for all governments rose by 57%, TABLE 5 (below) shows that the rates of growth ranged from a low of 36% for cities to a high of 70% for school districts. By comparing TABLE 5 with TABLE 1, it becomes clear that the aggregate property tax burden is being primarily driven by growth in school district spending, which had the highest percentage growth in expenditures over the ten years as well as the highest absolute total expenditures.
