By Elliot Brandt
BUFFALO — On the surface, Erie County’s 2027 budget is the kind county executives like to run on: a lower tax rate, no new programs and a healthy rainy-day fund.
Read further into the 2027-2030 financial plan County Executive Mark Poloncarz sent to the Legislature this month, though, and a harder story comes into view. The county’s own projections show deficits of $65.6 million in 2028, $73.8 million in 2029 and $68.5 million in 2030.
Those are worst-case figures, and they lean heavily on decisions made far from the Rath Building: in Washington, where the federal government is pushing food-aid costs onto states, and in Albany, where lawmakers must reauthorize the sales tax that funds most of county government. The authorization expires 13 months from now.
If the worst case arrives, the budget letter says, closing those gaps “would likely require a series of across-the-board austerity measures,” cutting non-mandated programs to the bone. That would mean road work, Sheriff’s road patrols, library hours, senior programs, crime lab turnaround and emergency preparedness.
The budget on its face
The proposal Mr. Poloncarz unveiled Oct. 15 totals $2.408 billion across all operating funds. The General Fund alone is about $2.196 billion, up $114.9 million, or 5.5 percent, according to the county’s budget documents.
The property tax rate would fall from $3.09 to $3.01 per $1,000 of assessed value, which the county calls the lowest rate in its history. It would be the ninth straight cut and the twelfth under Mr. Poloncarz, down 40.2 percent from $5.03 in 2012.
A lower rate isn’t the same as a smaller bill. With assessments rising, the county’s levy still grows. The budget letter puts the county-purpose levy up $11.1 million, or 3.5 percent, to $327.1 million, and the total with libraries at $360.6 million. The county’s press release describes the growth as 3.6 percent, or $12.7 million. The two documents measure it differently, and both show taxpayers paying more in total.
“If somebody’s assessment stayed the same when it comes to their county taxes, they will see a reduction in what they paid last year,” Mr. Poloncarz said, according to Spectrum News. “If their assessment went up, they could theoretically pay more. We reduced the rate and that’s all we can control.”
He described the plan as deliberately spare.
“The 2027 Budget is very tight, with no new programs or services except for the expected opening of Willowdale Park in 2027,” Mr. Poloncarz said in his release. “This Budget funds the necessary and mandated programs that are critical to our community but is also cognizant of the burdens and obstacles that are coming because of congressional actions.”
“It’s a balanced budget, it’s a fair budget. It doesn’t have any bells and whistles,” he told WKBW. “It’s a steady-as-she-goes budget, knowing that there’s a lot of rough waters ahead if the big ugly bill is not changed.”
Where the new money goes
Sales tax is the county’s engine. County-share receipts grew 5.6 percent, or $32.8 million, in 2025 and are running 5.7 percent ahead this year. The budget assumes a more cautious 3 percent next year: about $1.19 billion in total collections, with $658 million kept by the county and $528.5 million shared with cities, towns, villages, school districts and the NFTA under the 1977 sharing agreement.
Budget Director Mark Cornell said that growth is already spoken for.
“All of the benefit that the county gets from sales tax is going right back into dollars out the door to pay for the cost also associated with inflation and higher costs,” Mr. Cornell told Spectrum News.
According to the budget letter, three-quarters of the General Fund increase, about $86.4 million, comes from eight items:
- Sales tax sharing with municipalities: up $35.9 million.
- Child care: up $15.4 million to $87.4 million.
- Payments to ECMC through the intergovernmental transfer program: up $7.8 million to $72.3 million.
- Safety Net assistance: up $6.8 million to $61.8 million.
- Sheriff’s Office overtime: up $5.6 million to $25.1 million.
- Court-ordered mental health competency restoration: up $5 million to $9.5 million.
- Contributions to the county’s risk retention fund.
- Special-needs education services: up $4.9 million to $93.6 million.
The overtime line that worries the county’s own budget office
One of those lines comes with unusually pointed language from the executive branch.
Sheriff’s overtime has grown 93 percent, or $12.1 million, since the 2022 budget. “Beyond the total year-over-year growth, the distribution of overtime raises serious questions about sufficient monitoring and evaluation of overtime activity and workload management of employees,” the budget letter says.
The Sheriff’s Office asked for $22.4 million more in 2027 and was given $14.2 million. Overall, departments asked for $157.3 million in new spending. The letter says granting all of it would have required a 16.8 percent levy increase, pushing the rate to about $3.36. The administration cut $42.3 million from the requests, rejected 15 of 35 proposed new positions and deleted 35 vacant ones, leaving full-time staffing flat at 4,413.
The hospital payments look smaller than they really are. The county’s actual 2027 ECMC obligation is estimated at more than $100 million. The budget shows $72.3 million only because the county, the state and the hospital agreed to move $28.5 million in payments into 2026, while this year’s books look good. The letter says plainly that the move “lowers 2027 costs by shifting the timing of mandated payments rather than reducing overall expense.”
The two cliffs
SNAP. On Oct. 1, the federal government cut its share of SNAP administrative costs from 50 percent to 25 percent under the 2025 federal budget law, which Mr. Poloncarz calls “The Big Shift.” New York is one of only three states where counties pay the full non-federal share of those costs, the budget letter notes, “so the entire shift falls directly on counties.” The letter puts Erie County’s added administrative cost at $4.2 million a year. The county’s press release, which counts lost revenue and new employment-and-training costs, puts the 2027 hit higher.
The bigger blow comes a year later. Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states must pay a share of SNAP benefits themselves for the first time. If Albany passes that cost to counties, the county’s Department of Social Services estimates Erie County’s share at $11.3 million for the last three months of 2027 and $45 million to $50 million a year after that. Including the administrative shift, total exposure would be about $49 million to $54 million a year. The letter calls it “the largest single risk in the Plan.”
State law doesn’t yet assign that cost to counties. The New York State Association of Counties has urged Albany not to, and says on its website that the administrative change alone costs New York counties and New York City an estimated $168 million a year.
“The SNAP program is, for many families and individuals, the last line of defense before going hungry,” Mr. Poloncarz said in his release. The Chronicle reported this week that Western New York’s SNAP rolls fell nearly 10 percent in a year.
The sales tax. The second cliff is Albany’s. Erie County collects an extra 1.75 percent sales tax on top of the standard rate under a state authorization that expires Nov. 30, 2027. Those added rates are expected to bring in $437.1 million next year, about 62 percent of the sales tax revenue budgeted for county purposes.
Renewal requires votes by both the County Legislature and the State Legislature in 2027. The letter notes the county has approved every extension, including five unanimous votes under Mr. Poloncarz. It also warns that without renewal, “the County would face a revenue loss that no combination of property tax increases or service reductions could reasonably replace.”
Renewal has always come through, but it has never been automatic. The vote falls in a county election year, with the SNAP benefit shift landing the same fall.
The opposition’s case
Republicans in the Legislature’s minority argue the bigger problem is spending, not Washington.
“Year after year, county spending grows, and taxpayers are expected to absorb the cost,” Legislator Lindsay Lorigo wrote in a statement reported by Buffalo Toronto Public Media. “Erie County taxpayers deserve a government that lives within its means, not one that continually asks them to pay more.”
She also said the county executive should be pressing Albany, not just Congress.
“The reality is most of our mandates come from the state, and that’s where the county executive should be standing up, and standing up for the residents of Erie County so we don’t have to foot those bills,” Ms. Lorigo told WKBW. “Unfortunately, he’d rather blame the federal government when he could be having these conversations with his good friend Kathy Hochul.”
She singled out Willowdale Park, the county’s conversion of the former Westwood Country Club in Amherst, where the golf course is set for a soft opening in summer 2027. Its capital line includes $3 million for clubhouse renovations.
“Is this really the time to spending $7 million on Willowdale when that money can go towards more road repairs,” Ms. Lorigo said, according to WBEN.
What’s being deferred
The capital budget shows the same restraint. It totals $118.3 million, but the county’s own share, $90.9 million, is less than half the $188.1 million departments requested. A new highway maintenance facility and an expansion of the Emergency Operations Center went unfunded across the six-year program.
The jails remain unresolved. Last year, the Legislature removed $20 million in design money for a consolidated facility in Alden. The letter says the Holding Center and Correctional Facility still need “an estimated tens of millions in needed improvements,” and the county still has no long-term plan for them.
On the plus side, this is the first county budget in years with no operating money for the Bills’ stadium. Under the old lease, those costs had grown to more than $7.7 million in 2025.
The options on the table
The county has a cushion. It ended 2025 with $55.5 million more in General Fund revenue than spending, bringing total fund balance to $405.2 million. Unassigned fund balance stands at $149.6 million, about 10 percent of spending, or twice the minimum the county charter requires. The plan proposes using none of it.
The four-year plan lists options for closing future gaps, some much more painful than others:
- Revenue: better-than-expected sales tax, updated county fees, more in-rem property sales, renegotiated casino aid, tapping unassigned fund balance, or a property-tax-cap override.
- Sales tax sharing: changing the county’s 1991 arrangement with the NFTA or withdrawing from the 1977 agreement with cities. Either would keep more money at the county at the expense of local governments.
- Spending: vacancy controls, lower costs in upcoming union contracts, reduced bonding, attrition or layoffs, and across-the-board cuts to non-mandated departments.
Several of those options would hit someone else’s budget. Withdrawing from the 1977 agreement would hand the problem to the City of Buffalo and other municipalities, whose own finances are already under strain.
What to watch
The Legislature holds budget hearings in the coming weeks, and amendments are due by early December. Under the timeline WBEN reported, the budget must be in place by Dec. 18.
Three things will decide whether the out-year gaps turn real: whether Congress delays the SNAP benefit shift as part of a farm bill, whether Albany assigns that cost to counties in its 2027-28 budget, and whether the 1.75 percent sales tax is renewed before Nov. 30, 2027.
The documents are public. The 2027 proposed budget, budget message and four-year plan are posted on the county’s budget website.
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