NEW CITY – Rockland County Government has gone from near bankruptcy to the road to financial stability, County Executive Edwin Day told the county legislature Tuesday night.
In his annual State of the County address, Day said in the last three years, his administration has transformed the county “from near bankruptcy with an unsustainable tax-and-spend cycle to what it is today – a county that stayed within a very strict 1.17 tax increase, a county that cut spending nearly 10 percent, a county with four consecutive bond-rating increases, [and] a county government that is getting smaller and more efficient.”
Day told lawmakers the deficit is projected to be $10 million, more than a 90 percent reduction from $138 million when he took office.
He said for the first time in at least five years, the county was able to pay its $32 million pension bill to the state without financing it.
In the last three years the county has identified $3.5 million in Medicaid and other benefit costs that were received by ineligible people, Day said.
