Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Last week's announcement Mayor Ryan was going to increase property taxes by 25 percent was a shock to some, a sticker shock to one political analyst. But could there be political consequences down the road?
"It's huge. I mean, it screams sticker shock for anybody who who has to deal with it," says GOP strategist Carl Calabrese. "We went through all those years with Mayor Brown, and I don't think there's any tax increases in any significance, certainly nothing like this and and this really is a shock."
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Calabrese credits Ryan with campaigning for mayor under the banner of raising property taxes, but many thought it would be 10 to 15 percent. But he believes Common Councilmembers will be the ones hearing objections first. "These folks are going to hear it from their residents when they have their town hall meetings, and I'm sure they're getting phone calls as we speak. So that's where the pushback is going to come," says Calabrese.
Calabrese says Ryan is in a good position. "He's in the first year of a four year term before he has to face voters again. There's certain political logic to this, and that is, if you're going to have a bad budget and a big tax increase, it's always better to do it in the first year of a four year term than in the fourth year of a four year term," notes Calabrese. "The other aspect is this, let's say he doesn't really need 25% he's asking for 25% thinking he may get less, or if he does get to 25% that not only covers expenses that he wants to cover, but also builds a surplus. If you then continue to go back to New York State every year and asking for money, you get more money, and you continue to build that surplus. And guess what you can do with a big surplus in the fourth year of a four year term, you can use it to cut taxes"
Ken Kruly of Politics and Other Stuff says Ryan's proposal is not the biggest he's seen. "In 1976 the county executive, at the time Ned Regan, proposed a 76% tax increase, which, after several months of discussion, was whittled down to 29%," recalls Kruly.
Kruly says Ryan has been spending a lot of time trying to get people to understand that that the city has been poorly managed physically for the last 20 years, and so there's there's some difficult things that have to be done. "It's going to be difficult to to get support for something like this. But basically, what it comes down to is the city is broke, and if it doesn't do some major things like this,, it's going to have to start looking at cutbacks services and so forth. It has no money, it has no reserves, and it's got a problem, or a very serious problem," says Kruly.
Both believe ramifications may not be steep. Kruly says that's because councilmembers still have a say. "The Council could propose changes in the budget. We haven't seen the budget yet, so it could have some political ramifications, or it could turn out that the public understands that because the city is broke the it has to take some drastic action with taxes, and I think that might help tone things down a little bit, but that remains to be seen," surmises Kruly.
Calabrese says Ryan and other Democrats have one big advantage. "It seems that in certain communities, Amherst being one of them, city, Buffalo being another, if you have a D after your name, you get reelected and elected," says Calabrese. "That has been the case, and I think it's going to continue to be the case. It's possible that there's enough voter discontent that the mayor could be challenged in a primary, and he could lose that primary, but he would lose it to another Democrat who would then go on to get elected, and so all you're doing is changing you're changing the the names of people who are running, but they're still in the same party with the same political and governmental philosophy."
Calabrese does not think a Republican will be elected to office in Buffalo in his lifetime.