Former NorCo Exec Defends His No-Tax-Hike Budgets, Justifies Kicking Can Down the Road

As most of you know, NorCo Exec Tara Zrinski has proposed raising property taxes by 43.5%. County Council will never agree. Even her closest allies there have distanced themselves from a very unpopular spending plan. At last week's Council meeting, she nearly broke down in tears as she tried to justify it to an unpersuadable public. Partisan Republicans are opposed to any hike at all, even if it means drastic cuts in services. But more open-minded Republicans and many others would agree with her goals. Employees are paid far too little, and that needs to change, especially in the county's 24/7 operations. The county needs to keep its retirement accounts funded. Its rainy-day fund is depleted. Necessary repairs to county infrastructure have been deferred. Even the county's commitment to open space to the tune of $3 million a year was shortchanged in the last budget. Without naming names, Zrinski has laid the blame for this financial morass on former Executive Lamont McClure. In a recent Facebook post, he explains why he never sought and actually reduced taxes.  I'll post what he says, and tomorrow, I'll give you the perspective of District Attorney Steve Baratta and his fractious relationship with McClure

The recent news that my successor as County Executive has proposed raising real estate property taxes an astonishing 43% has caused a furor. It’s also raised several questions in the minds of citizens about the decisions we made over the last 8 years. In this and other mediums, I will try and answer the most common and salient questions I get asked. The first one I will tackle is why didn’t we incrementally raise taxes over the years to avoid a huge increase in one year ? (This is long and you may need to take a nap while reading, and if you’re not from Northampton County, you may want to use it to combat insomnia, but here we go.)

First, I disagree that a 43% increase this year is necessary or warranted. But, that’s a different post. I’m only going to discuss the 7 no tax increase budgets in this post as the 2022 tax cut deserves its own treatment.

Second, the last 8 years were dominated by the COVID-19 Global Pandemic. The economy was crushed when the Country shut down, and after the attempts at rescuing the economy supercharged inflation it would have been economically counterproductive and overly burdensome to place an additional property tax obligation on our taxpayers.

Third, in order to attempt to rescue the economy the Congress, during the first Trump Administration passed The Cares Act, and during the Biden Administration it passed The American Rescue Plan. Northampton County directly received $63,000,000.00 from these two Acts of Congress. Gracedale received many millions more directly as did Emergency Management and the Area Agency on Aging. Northampton County received tens of millions of dollars in aid and it would have been immoral to raise taxes while that money was coming into the coffers. (An approximate total of 90 million dollars.)

Fourth, when I took office, Northampton County was normally keeping surpluses of 60-100 million dollars per year. There was no need to raise taxes just to keep citizens money sitting in our bank accounts. I’ll talk more about this when I discuss the 2022 tax cut. Fifth, philosophically during my time on County Council and as County Executive, I came to view the real estate property tax as regressive. This is ironic in that when the property tax was conceived it was the ultimate progressive tax, however, after WWII and the GI Bill, home ownership was democratized and now the people being asked to bear a great burden are middle class seniors on a fixed income.

Sixth, while I’m a Democrat, I also found myself in the context of the property tax, and the way Northampton County had budgeted for so long, to be an avowed tax cutter. While on County Council I tried to cut the millage rate 5 or 6 times, and by now you know what I did in 2022. Seventh, I ran in 2017 for County Executive promising not to raise property taxes, and I won convincingly. When I ran for re-election in 2021, I promised not to raise property taxes. I kept my promises to people of Northampton County.

Eighth, during all 8 of our years we never had to cut any core or vital services such that we would have needed a tax increase. In fact, we expanded services.

Ninth, the politics of taxes are very tricky anywhere, but especially for Democrats in one of the most Purple counties in the Country. I was personally involved in two elections where we wrested control from the Republicans, and both times it was because they had raised taxes. The first time was in 2005 when we took the County Council majority as the Republicans raised taxes 64%. The second was when I defeated John Brown in 2017 after he and his Republican Council majority raised taxes by 1 mil.

Tenth, I take full responsibility for the 8 budgets that I proposed and passed. I’m quite proud of my record, but it’s worth noting that our 9 member County Council is the Governing Body of Northampton County. Only County Council can establish the millage rate. At any time, during those 8 budgets, any 6 members of County Council could have raised taxes “incrementally.” They would have needed 6 because I would have vetoed it, but I digress. Only once during the 11th hour of the 8th budget did any member [former Council member Ron Heckman] propose raising taxes even 1 mil. That motion died for failure of a second.

In his 10-point manifesto, McClure fails to address the poor morale and turnover, his refusal to fully fund open space and the sub-par salaries paid to county employees. Whether he likes it or not, he certainly appears to have balanced budgets on the backs of county workers. His philosophical objection to property tax is no justification for treating workers like shit. 

Zrinski has clearly gone too far, but her goal of providing a decent wage is something that must be pursued.