MOULE: The sales-tax numbers game

July 15, 2008 at 9:28am

Only in Monroe County could higher than expected sales tax revenues be bad news.

The State Comptroller's Office released a report yesterday that showed Monroe County had a 4.38 percent increase in sales tax revenues between 2006 and 2007 - from $384.1 million in 2006 to $400.9 million in 2007. The growth for the first quarter of this year is even higher, the report says.

So why is this bad news for Monroe? County officials opted into a plan - the sales tax intercept - where the state keeps a percentage of the county's sales tax money in exchange for taking over the Monroe's Medicaid payments, and they did it based on historical sales tax growth of less than 2 percent. �

The Comptroller's Office warned of this situation when the deadline to opt in to the intercept approached.

But the report also says sales tax revenues are bound to decrease if the state and country continue to experience an economic downtown. It recommends that counties find ways to rely less on sales tax revenue.

The interesting thing is that's what Monroe has done, intentionally or not.

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