Longtime New York State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli this month released his second of two annual stress reports for fiscal year 2023. The Village of Saugerties was one of only two municipalities in the lowest-ranking category, “significant stress.”
The Village of Saugerties made DiNapoli’s list in a first report released on March 27 of this year, designated as in fiscal stress according to the state’s Fiscal Stress Monitoring System (FSMS); added to the list this month as in “moderate stress,” the next lowest ranking, were the City of Albany, the City of Little Falls, and the towns of Bennington, West Turin and Yates.
In early April of this year, Village of Saugerties mayor Bill Murphy pushed back on the “significant stress” designation, claiming the study was incomplete, inaccurate, and lacked clarity.
“We have been financially sound in years past, and the reason being not raising the village taxes for ten years,” Murphy said in April. “As a matter of fact, from 2013-2023 we lowered the rate each year to try and assist our residents with increased assessments. As a result of this, we were required to apply for a TAN (tax anticipation note) in May 2023, which was fully paid back in three months by August of 2023. This is also reflected in the report without explanation.”
Murphy noted that the FSMS report only covers municipalities which submit their data.
Beyond his belief the report is inaccurate, Murphy said it cast the village as singularly troubled when hundreds of local governments failed to submit any data. Of the more than 500 municipalities which didn’t file, few were singled out in the comptroller’s report. Those ranked in stress which stopped filing were not scored. The Village of Catskill in Greene County hasn’t filed on time since it received a designation of “susceptible to fiscal stress” in 2019.
DiNapoli acknowledged as much in an October 3 press release.
“The number of local governments designated in fiscal stress fell to historically low levels over the past two years,” DiNapoli wrote. “At the same time, an increasing number of municipalities have failed to file required financial data with my office, diminishing the transparency and accountability that residents expect and deserve. An inability to file timely financial reports may be an indicator of larger fiscal problems, and closer scrutiny of these localities may be needed.”
The FSMS system has been in place since 2013.
In April, Murphy shared a screenshot from the state’s data base indicating that Saugerties did submit its 2022 financial reporting in a timely manner.
“I guess we would have been better off not to file,” said Murphy.
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