New York Counties Dropping Their Gas Tax Caps

Legislature Minority Leader Schmitt will undoubtedly try to push his useless Gas tax Cap again now that gas prices are on the rise. I pointed out that his plan just won't work and other counties who adopted a Gas Tax Cap are dropping the cap or reviewing the cap.
According to the Poughkeepsie Journal "Onondaga County this month dropped its two-year cap on gas sales taxes after an analysis showed customers were seeing no significant savings at the pump compared to other upstate counties.
Other counties made similar choices after the state in 2006 let counties put a cap on taxes collected on gas sales. The cap exempted county sales tax on prices more than $2 per gallon, which was intended to lower costs by 4 cents on a $3 gallon of gas
"Yet Rockland County dropped its county cap late last year and other counties, including Schenectady, Orange and Albany, also abandoned a cap after some determined the savings was simply going back to oil companies.
"It is clear that the intended savings for Albany County drivers was a windfall for the oil industry," Albany County Comptroller Michael Conners said in a 2006 report.
"Initially, 15 counties capped gas sales taxes, but now it's down to only seven. Officials in one of those, Oswego County, say it is considering dropping the cap when the law expires May 30.
"What they found was that by and large they were not able to identify that there was the cost savings directly to the consumer," said Mark LaVigne, spokesman for the state Association of Counties.
Other counties, including Westchester and Monroe, never instituted the cap, in part because they said they didn't want to give up the sales-tax revenue.
"In Onondaga County, though, Executive Joanie Mahoney wants to use the revenue from lifting the cap - about $5 million a year - for property-tax relief."