The offical seal of Chenango County hangs in the board of supervisors meeting room at the Chenango County Office Building. (Photo by Tyler Murphy)


By Bill CraineChenango County Treasurer and Budget Officer

2020 was a very trying and difficult time for all of us. Each year I am responsible for preparing Management’s Discussion and Analysis that becomes an integral part of our financial statements. In my June 2020 comments (our annual financial statements are available on the County’s website under the Treasurer’s Department) I noted the following: “In our lifetimes rarely has an event enveloped and so quickly impacted our mental, physical and financial health.”


We went on to say that “at this time it is impossible to project the adverse effect to Chenango County and its residents. We are not sure that the financial impact will be confined to only 2020.” In fact, we now know that local governments and schools will feel the pandemic fallout for at least the next three or four years. With your help we will get through this hard time.



With that backdrop, how did Chenango County government financially weather the storm? Fortunately, we had excellent sales and real property tax receipts in early 2020. By fall however, it became clear sales tax collections had fallen by over 10% and that NY State aid would be curtailed by at least 20%. These two items collectively amount to about $4 million annually.



We dealt with this by reducing our 2020 spending by over 2.5% (on a $95 million budget) and adopting a 2021 budget with still less spending. In fact, over the last eight years our spending has increased by only 1.25% per year or slightly less than the rate of inflation. This is quite amazing as about 20% of our outflow is on healthcare (Medicaid and our employee health plan). Most notably our benefit plan costs have increased by just 2% per year since 2013. This record will match up well with other large local employers.



Fortunately, by our late fall 2021 budget adoption due date, sales tax revenues had stabilized. We also had tremendous help from our Department Heads who further shaved costs. This type of effort allowed us to offset a reduction of over $1 million in interest earnings on our US Treasury portfolio. In March 2020 we saw interest rates on $50 million of Treasury holdings drop from over 2% to almost zero.



Because of the County’s strong financial base, which has taken years to build but is easy to lose, we were able to overcome obstacles and adopt our tenth straight tax cap compliant budget. Taxes increased 1.79% on average. Please note no one municipality pays an average tax rate as each entity’s individual rate depends on overall assessed values and changes in equalization rates.



The County continues to be one of only two debt free counties in the state and maintains high marks from the NY Comptroller’s Office for its lack of “financial stress.”

I want to take this opportunity to thank our dedicated employees. These women an men work hard daily to make Chenango County a better place.



This is just a brief synopsis of our 2020 and 2021 financial highlights. The Evening Sun, and its Editor Tyler Murphy, have graciously offered me the opportunity to write a periodic column.



I plan in my first effort, probably in March, to talk about how, a number of years ago, we installed a series of six financial precepts that act as our financial guard rails. These precepts have instilled the necessary financial discipline to control spending and develop sound programmatic offers. That report will likely be followed in April by a look at how we ended the 2020 year from a financial standpoint.