By Walter Pryce
This is an opinion column. It reflects the views of the writer.
Erie County’s 2027 budget cuts the property tax rate for the ninth straight year. Its own four-year plan, released the same week, projects deficits of $65.6 million in 2028, $73.8 million in 2029 and $68.5 million in 2030.
Those gaps are not mainly the product of anything decided in the Rath Building. They hinge on two calls Albany has not yet made: whether the state hands counties a new share of food-aid costs created in Washington, and whether it renews the sales tax that pays for most of county government. Albany should settle both early in its 2027 session, in writing, and the Erie County Legislature should use its budget hearings to get its own house in order while it waits.
A federal shift that lands on county taxpayers
On Oct. 1, the 2025 federal budget law cut Washington’s share of SNAP administrative costs from 50 percent to 25 percent. New York is one of only three states where counties pay the full non-federal share of those costs, according to the New York State Association of Counties, which puts the new statewide burden on counties and New York City at an estimated $168 million a year.
That is the small bill. Starting Oct. 1, 2027, states with high SNAP payment error rates must pay part of the benefits themselves, up to 15 percent for states above 10 percent. New York’s rate for federal fiscal year 2024 was 14.09 percent, NYSAC reports, and it estimates the state’s exposure at $1.1 billion a year. No one has decided yet whether any of that will be passed down to counties.
Erie County is budgeting as if it might be. As the Chronicle reported Friday, the county’s Department of Social Services estimates the local share at $45 million to $50 million a year after 2027. County Executive Mark Poloncarz’s budget release puts it at about $55 million. Either figure would swallow most of a projected out-year gap on its own.
“The SNAP program is, for many families and individuals, the last line of defense before going hungry,” Mr. Poloncarz said in that release. That is not a slogan in Western New York, where SNAP rolls fell nearly 10 percent in a year.
Why Albany should own the error-rate penalty
The case for keeping the benefit penalty at the state level is simple. The error rate that triggers it is measured statewide, and the penalty is assessed on the state. Counties process the cases, but the state sets the rules, runs the eligibility systems and answers to Washington for the result. Pushing it onto county property taxpayers would bill homeowners for a number their county cannot fix alone.
The Legislature’s Republican minority makes a similar point. “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,” Legislator Lindsay Lorigo told WKBW. On this question, she and the county executive should be on the same side, and so should every member of Western New York’s Albany delegation.
The sales tax should not be a cliffhanger
The second decision is the 1.75 percent in additional sales tax Erie County collects under a state authorization that expires Nov. 30, 2027. The county expects it to raise $437.1 million next year, about 62 percent of the sales tax budgeted for county purposes. The county’s budget letter warns that without renewal the county would face a loss “that no combination of property tax increases or service reductions could reasonably replace.”
Renewal has always come through. But it requires votes in both the County Legislature and the State Legislature in 2027, a county election year, in the same fall the SNAP benefit shift is scheduled to hit. Leaving it to the final months invites brinkmanship nobody needs. Budget Director Mark Cornell has already said the growth in that revenue is 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,” he told Spectrum News.
The strongest objection, and what the county owes in return
The best argument against asking Albany for relief is that the county’s spending keeps growing on its own. “Year after year, county spending grows, and taxpayers are expected to absorb the cost,” Ms. Lorigo wrote in a statement reported by Buffalo Toronto Public Media. The tax rate is falling, but the county-purpose levy still rises about $11 million under the plan because assessments are going up.
She has a point, and the budget itself supplies the evidence. Sheriff’s Office overtime has grown 93 percent, or $12.1 million, since the 2022 budget. The administration’s own budget letter says the way that overtime is distributed “raises serious questions about sufficient monitoring and evaluation of overtime activity and workload management of employees.” Counties also handle SNAP applications, so they share some responsibility for accuracy even if the penalty is the state’s.
That is not a reason for Albany to pass the bill down. It is a reason for the county to show it spends carefully while asking for help. Erie County also has room to plan rather than panic: an unassigned fund balance of $149.6 million, about twice the charter minimum.
What should happen now
Gov. Kathy Hochul should put language in her 2027-28 executive budget, due in January, stating that the state will absorb any SNAP benefit cost share and will not pass it to counties. Western New York’s state senators and Assembly members should insist on it, and candidates on the ballot Nov. 3 should say now whether they will.
The State Legislature should renew Erie County’s additional sales tax in the first half of 2027 rather than near the deadline, and the County Legislature should schedule its own renewal vote alongside it.
And before it votes on the budget in December, the County Legislature should require two things in writing: an independent review of Sheriff’s overtime, and a contingency plan that ranks the gap-closing options in the four-year plan, so residents know what would be cut first if Albany says no.
The proposed budget and four-year plan are public, and budget hearings begin in the coming weeks. Residents who want a say should call their county legislator and their state representatives before the December vote, and ask each one a simple question: who pays for the SNAP shift?
Featured image: The Edward A. Rath County Office Building in downtown Buffalo. Photo by Fortunate4now via Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
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