MINEOLA, NY – The Nassau County Legislature today authorized an agreement County Executive Curran reached with the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority (NIFA) to allow the State Comptroller and NIFA to restore $7.6 million to towns and qualifying villages under the New York State’s 2019 Aid and Incentives for Municipalities (AIM) program.
The agreement, which is cost neutral to the County, comes after AIM funding was reduced for the 2019-20 NYS budget and required the Office of the New York State Comptroller (OSC) to withhold certain county sales tax revenues and make payments to the impacted towns and villages in the amounts that they had previously received through AIM. For towns and villages in Erie County or Nassau County, the new state law had no mechanism in place for OSC to make AIM-Related payments in NYS fiscal year 2019-20.
“We stepped up to address this problem because our towns and villages rely on this funding to balance their budgets and to continue delivering important services to County residents. Nassau County has taken action, and I’m hopeful our quick response enables the State Comptroller to make timely 2019 AIM-related payments as required by December 15th, 2019,” said Nassau County Executive Laura Curran.
Nassau County and NIFA have entered into an agreement to allow NIFA to return to the State Comptroller the amount of sales taxes necessary to enable the Comptroller to make the 2019 AIM payments to towns and villages. NIFA will then remit the remaining balance of sales taxes that have not been distributed as 2019 AIM payments to the County. The County by law has no right to the sales taxes required to be withheld and distributed as 2019 AIM-related payments, so this agreement is cost-neutral to Nassau County.
The County Executive filed today’s emergency legislation and agreement with the office of the Clerk to the Nassau County Legislature on October 31st and requested emergency action by the Legislature in order to ensure municipalities continued to receive these crucial payments.
County Executive Curran also expressed confidence that State partners will ensure municipalities in both Nassau and Erie Counties receive these critical payments going forward by passing legislation to address the matter next session in Albany.