On February 4, Martin Rogowsky, the Westchester County Legislator for the Sixth District, which includes Rye Brook, Port Chester, and Harrison, held a meeting at Rye Brook Village Hall to discuss the county’s budget. Although voters sharply rebuked the county’s budgetary policies in November—Republican Rob Astorino, offering a policy of tax relief and fiscal accountability, defeated incumbent Democrat County Executive Andy Spano by 16 percent—fewer than 10 residents attended the meeting.

In December, the Westchester County Board of Legislators approved a 1.8 billion dollar county budget, raising taxes by 2.9%. In January, Astorino announced the county faced a $60 million budget shortfall.

Rogowsky, who was reelected in an uncontested election in November, is also an outspoken critic of the county’s settlement with the Anti-Discrimination Center, which mandates that the county, under the watch of a federal monitor, build or acquire over 750 affordable housing units marketed to minorities in predominantly white neighborhoods like Rye Brook.

FOCUS sat down with Rogowsky to discuss these issues:

What made you join county politics?

I’ve been interested in politics for a long time, since I was probably around your age. John F. Kennedy was assassinated when I was in ninth grade and that got me thinking about President Kennedy and the things he stood for. So, I’ve been involved, I’ve run for office before, I’ve been very involved politically, and I had the opportunity in 1989 to run for the county government, the county Legislature. So I did, and I won, and then, sort of a long story, I was in for four years, I left, I came back, but my interest in government and politics has been a life-long interest. And eventually it ended me up here.

You ran unopposed on the last election. Do you think your constituents would benefit from some competition?

Well, I guess yes, I believe in democracy. It always would be a good thing to have competition in an election because it just obviously makes any legislator, including myself, work as hard as I can to be responsive and be representative–to do what my constituents want, as opposed to just what I want. Sometimes if someone runs unopposed for too long, it is possible to forget what the constituents need and focus more on personal things. So, I do believe that competition is good, but I would add at the same time that my running unopposed I do take as a certain judgment by the people in my district that I am doing a good job. If I was not doing a good job, presumably someone would step forward to run against me. But at the end of the day it is always healthier to have competition.

How do you see the economy of Westchester during this period of economic recovery?

Well, I hope we are in a recovery. The businesses in Westchester and the homeowners of Westchester have taken a hit. There are many more foreclosures going on; we recently reviewed all the numbers: there are hundreds of foreclosures happening in Westchester now, versus relatively few just a couple of years ago. So, the recession has had a big impact on homeowners; it’s had a big impact on unemployment. Our unemployment rate was always relatively low, like around four percent or less. It is now closer to eight percent. So, even in Westchester, our unemployment rate is way up. Those are the difficult things, but I’m hoping that the recession is near its end, and that things will start to pick up. I think because we are so close to New York City, and there are just so many people in the area, that unemployment is not 10 percent as it is nationally. So, I think the recession has not hurt Westchester as much as other areas. But to a person whose house is being foreclosed it doesn’t matter where they are—they’re being foreclosed and it is difficult. We have definitely had our difficulties in Westchester, but generally it has not been as bad as other places in the country

Regarding the affordable housing lawsuit, filed by the Anti-Discrimination Center of Metro-New York, you voted against the settlement. What were your reasons?

I was not convinced that the law that the plaintiffs used to sue us applied. I mean, obviously the judge thought it did, but I felt we had a very good chance on appeal to make an argument to different judges that this law, which passed in 1863, was intended for other purposes. The plaintive was very creative and used this 1863 law—it is the first time that it was ever used on this type of situation, with a county, and housing, and applications for grant money; but they convinced the judge, and we were asked to either settle and accept the judge’s decision or not. I felt, on the law, I would have taken the chance of going to appeal to the United States Supreme Court. I felt that the case would have been thrown out, so that was one reason. The law, even if it did apply, certainly would have cost the county taxpayers a whole lot of money if we lost the appeal—certainly a couple of a hundred million dollars if not even a little more, so there is no doubt it would have been very expensive.

But the other side of the coin was I philosophically disagreed with the idea of having a Federal monitor mandating where and how much housing we build. The law would not have done that; the law just would have said, “pay the big penalty,” but there would have been no mandates to actually build the housing; there would have been no Federal monitor. We had to agree to those things, which we did in the settlement. I would have taken my chance, again, filing the appeal and even if we lost, it would have been a hit to the tax payers. But my constituents that I talked to felt it would have been worth paying a little extra in taxes to cover the cost of the lawsuit to not have to face the mandate for the next seven years of some outside person, this Federal monitor and the Federal government, sticking their nose in Westchester and saying “You shall do this, you shall do that.” Philosophically, I disagreed with that, so I had to vote no.

Is it true that Westchester County may be facing a 60 million dollar budget deficit?

Well no, that’s not true. There was something in the paper about cash. Every week–it happens with families, it happens with governments–we have to pay our bills. At the end of a week, or at the end of a month, we have to pay the electric bill, we have to pay salaries; you need cash in the bank to do that. Westchester County collects taxes from the towns twice a year. The towns send the tax money to us in May and in October, so we got money in October. The bottom line is, it looks like we are facing a time when we are going to be up to 60 million dollars short on cash. Come June first, we need so many dollars to pay the electric bill, and we may not have the money in the bank. It looks like we are going to have to borrow maybe up to 60 million dollars. We make projections, but our budget is based on no deficit. We will raise enough money in property taxes, and presumably in sales tax, to meet all our expenses. Usually we have 100 million dollars extra in the bank, let’s say. So if we have a lot of bills, there is always money in the bank. Until our next payments, the sales taxes check comes in, the mortgages tax check comes in, the property tax check—as we are collecting money, we are spending money—we always had enough extra money in the budget to pay those expenses. We have run short of the extra money sitting in the bank, so we are going to have to borrow, just for a few months, until our revenues come in. We are short on cash maybe up to 60 million dollars, but I would not call it a budget deficit. We have no real deficit, hopefully. We will find out at the end of the year, but we are not planning on any.

You voted for a 2.9 percent increase on the tax levy on the county. What was your rationale for increasing taxes when thousands of people in Westchester are facing economic hardships?

On a purely financial level, one has little to do with the other. My philosophy is always to have taxes as low as possible, when times are good. When times are good and times are bad, politically people look at it differently, but it really doesn’t impact my decision making because I do not spend more money just because times are good. My philosophy, again, is to provide the services we need to provide but at the lowest possible tax, year after year. Certainly, some of my colleagues, because times are tough, wanted to show empathy with their constituents. They wanted to have a zero tax increase because it sounds good. When times are bad you have a zero tax increase. But does that mean when times are good we can have a 10 percent tax increase?

Every year we should just make the judgments based on the budget, based on the services, and so the 2.9 was really the minimum that we needed, because we have to deal with the real world. Times are bad; our sales tax revenues were down. People are not selling their homes. Mortgage tax revenues were down. Medicaid costs were up. We have rising costs, revenues were dropping, and yet we still have to pay for Medicaid, we have to follow mandates, we have to pay for them, we have to pay the salary increases to our unions. We had no salary increases for all the non-union people. We legislators had no salary increases, but there is a contract with the unions so those contracts had to be followed.

To have a zero tax increase really is not responsible. I was satisfied and we cut a lot of jobs, we cut back on some services, but we really cannot cut back on too many because most of them are mandated. I thought we did a responsible budget. We got it down. The county executive gave us a 4.9 [percent increase in the budget]. That was his proposal; we took it and we got it down to 2.9. I am concerned that next year because we did not do higher–we cut it down to 2.9–taxes could be a lot higher. People are not going to be happy. The economy may or may not have rebounded, but that 2.9 was probably a little low, and all things considered, we will probably have to raise taxes even higher next year.

Public schools across county are cutting back on the numbers of teachers and other funding. What is Westchester County doing in terms of cutbacks?

I think we eliminated 37 jobs in the budget. We eliminated two jobs here at the Board of Legislature. Our budget for the legislature we cut six percent. It hasn’t really been publicized but, for our board budget, which is somewhere around four million dollars, we didn’t go up 2.9 or 1.9. We actually cut our budget minus six. In keeping with the economy, at least for ourselves, we cut back more than probably any place else. We did a minus six, but because, again, so much of Westchester County is mandated, we have to spend 204 million dollars on Medicaid—we have to do it. Let’s cut it back to 190 million? We can’t. The state won’t let us. Early childhood costs us the 80 million dollars or 90 million dollars. We can’t say, “Well times are tough, we’ll cut it 50 million.” We are sensitive, obviously, to the economy and what is going on so we did cut our budget–we cut it six percent and we have had layoffs. We try to do what the school districts are doing. Minus six percent: that is showing the public that we do listen.

Would you like to say anything to the students at Blind Brook?

I hope they will participate in public debate, public policy issues. The stereotype of high school students, even college students, is that many of them are more interested in other areas of life and not quite as interested in the public policy issues of the day. I hope that the students would find at least one issue or maybe one politician that they are interested in: Federal, State, whatever area; and try to just get involved in the process, whether its writing letters to politicians or getting involved in the campaign—helping somebody that they believe in get elected. I hope they get involved and volunteer–just help out the community. Carver Center is a great organization in downtown Port Chester. There are a lot of organizations that can use volunteers and help. And just have the students get involved, one way or the other. And don’t drink and drive.