SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The Common Council today unanimously approved a sales tax-sharing agreement with Onondaga County, paving the way for the 10-year deal to take effect in 2021.
The deal splits up more than $350 million in annual sales tax revenue, with about one-quarter going to the city.
Mayor Ben Walsh and Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon quietly reached an agreement to extend the current tax-sharing deal last month, avoiding what are typically drawn-out, feisty negotiations.
Under the terms of the deal, more than 24 percent of that money will go to the city. That’s about $88 million this year. Another 74 percent ($272 million) goes to the county and 0.7 percent ($2.5 million) is split among school districts.
The Onondaga County Legislature approved the deal in a meeting Jan. 2.
Councilor-at-Large Tim Rudd, who chairs the council’s finance committee, called the agreement a “fair deal" and said he hopes the city and county can continue a productive working relationship.
As part of that relationship, Rudd encouraged the county’s industrial development agency not to approve tax exemptions within the city -- a major point of division between the former mayor and former county executive.
“One thing I like with us working together is the idea that OCIDA won’t cut any deals for property tax within the city,” Rudd said while expressing optimism about a positive city-county relationship.
Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon applauded the council for approving the deal.
"Your unanimous vote recognizes our renewed spirit of cooperation and appreciation that we are all in this together.” McMahon said in a statement. “As I have said many times, we cannot have a healthy county without a healthy city nor a healthy city without a healthy county. This agreement provides much needed financial certainty and was simply the right thing to do.”
In a finance committee meeting last week, City Auditor Marty Masterpole urged the council to delay a vote in order to more deeply explore the current state of county sales tax. The current deal doesn’t expire for two years, which means there’s plenty of time to look at the current landscape, Masterpole said. Extending the current deal could be a good idea, he said, but it warranted more study.
Mayor Ben Walsh said the deal is a good one and urged the council to act.
Also in that meeting, Councilor-at-Large Michael Greene lamented the city’s lack of usable data in determining whether the deal was a good one. He suggested hiring someone to collect and analyze sales tax data for the next time the agreement comes up for negotiation in 2030. He said it would be helpful to know how much of the county’s sales tax was generated in the city.
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That kind of data is not currently available.
Rudd mentioned the lack of data during Tuesday’s vote. He said the deal was a good one, based on the limited data available.
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