NY-21: Stefanik's "Taxin' Tedra" claims are misleading
The race for the North Country's seat in the House of Representatives turned aggressive this summer. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik hit...
Sep 27, 2018 — The race for the North Country's seat in the House of Representatives turned aggressive this summer. Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik hit the airwaves hard, playing up her own record and slamming her Democratic opponent Tedra Cobb.
One of the most persistent claims made by Stefanik is that Cobb voted to raise taxes more than 20 times when she served on the St. Lawrence County legislature. Research by North Country Public Radio and other news organizations have found most of those claims to be exaggerated, taken out of context, or factually untrue.
But it also appears that the Cobb campaign has struggled to counter the ads, and she’s gotten some of her claims against Stefanik wrong.
Labeling the challenger
Elise Stefanik struck early with an attack ad on June 27, the day after Cobb became the Democratic nominee. “Taxin’ Tedra voted 20 times to increase taxes,” the narrator says. Stefanik has since repeated the claim in other videos and at press events. “My opponent has a record of raising taxes over 20 times. She’s taken over 20 votes to raise taxes on hardworking families,” the Republican said in Plattsburgh.
Cobb served on the St. Lawrence County legislature from 2003 to 2010. Just about every action she took as a legislator is archived on the county website, in the meeting minutes. That’s where Stefanik’s team found those alleged votes.
Her campaign lists all of their sources online: 21 links to news articles and county documents. But the thing is, only some of those votes are what most people would think of as a tax hike.
Reporters dig in
Will Doolittle writes for the Glens Falls Post Star. He first did a fact check on the claims last month. “They were bipartisan votes, and they were just sort of standard budget work that happens in every single municipality year after year,” he said.
“It looked as if someone went and did some kind of search of St. Lawrence County board minutes and looked for ‘Cobb’ and ‘taxes,’ something like that, and every time that came up, took a kind of cursory glance at it and then just included it in their list,” Doolittle added.
One other news organization, The Sun Community News based in Elizabethtown, did a similar fact check. Reporter Pete DeMola, who covers politics and local government, says the claims didn’t add up.
“Having read the materials, I think a lot of those votes – I think the Stefanik campaign is conflating some of those votes in the viewers’ eyes. Not all votes are created equally,” Demola said.
North Country Public Radio did its own fact checking, and here’s what we found. Just seven of those 21 votes can be described as tax increases – with major caveats.
Claim: Cobb voted for tax levy increases
Four of the listed votes were in support of the county budgets for 2008 through 2011. In each of those years, the tax levy increased.
The levy is the total amount of money - revenue - the county has to raise in taxpayer dollars to balance its budget. But it doesn’t necessarily mean an individual taxpayer or family will have to pay more in taxes. That depends, according to Mike Zurlo.
We reached out to Zurlo because he’s an expert on local government – he’s been a county administrator in Clinton County for more than 15 years. “It all depends on sales tax distribution, and how – if a county shares its sales tax with municipalities,” Zurlo said. “There are a lot of factors that affect that.” Zurlo is a registered Republican but doesn’t publicly support candidates in any race.
So Cobb voted for four budgets where the tax levy increased. But in the 2008 budget, the property tax rate actually decreased, from $8.57 per $1,000 of the assessed value, to $8.43. In the 2010 budget, the property tax rate remained the same, at $8.14 per $1,000.
Verdict: Misleading. While the tax levy increased, taxes people had to pay didn't necessarily go up.
Claim: Cobb supported fee increases
The Stefanik camp also points out two moments when Cobb voted to raise fees, in 2003 and 2008. Again – not exactly a tax increase.
The two fees apply only to some people in the county, not all taxpayers: people dropping off their garbage at the county dump, and those recording or registering documents with the county, such as property sales. Both fee increases passed unanimously.
Verdict: True, but misleading.
Claim: Cobb voted to expand the bed tax
One tax hike claim does hold up without caveats. In 2004, Cobb voted to expand the bed tax levied on small hotels and bed and breakfasts. That resolution, which ended an exception for hotels and motels with fewer than six rental units, also passed unanimously.
Verdict: True.
Tax precursors
When legislators were dealing with sales and mortgage taxes, they passed several precursors to tax increases – resolutions requesting that the state enact “home rule” legislation to give St. Lawrence County the flexibility to raise taxes at a future date if needed. Two mortgage tax precursors passed unanimously in 2009 and 2010.
Between 2003 and 2010, legislators passed similar measures to increase the sales tax. “But the board didn’t actually vote to make that increase while (Cobb) was on the board,” Will Doolittle explained.
“They didn’t do it until 2013, and Cobb had left the board in 2010,” he said. “So to me that’s kind of a half-way thing. Yes, she voted – she took the preparatory step toward raising sales tax, but by the time the board voted to actually raise the sales tax, she was long gone from the board.”
“It didn’t tell the whole story,” Doolittle added.
A total of six assertions fit under the tax precursor category – some of which overlap and duplicate one another.
Verdict: Up for interpretation. Cobb supported two sets of procedural measures allowing the county to increase taxes later.
The rest of the claims
NCPR’s research found that eight other votes that the Stefanik camp flagged as tax increases range from sketchy and questionable, to false.
Among them was a non-controversial vote authorizing the collection of omitted taxes – a routine action to update the tax rolls or fix tax errors.
Another was a resolution asking the state legislature to end the New York State Power Authority’s tax-exempt status, and pay property taxes on land it owns in St. Lawrence County and elsewhere. That apparently never moved forward at the state level. (If such legislation had advanced, it's not clear it would've meant a tax increase for state taxpayers. According to Paul DeMichele, a spokesman for the power authority, NYPA finances itself and does not use taxpayer dollars.)
A 2007 “property tax collection amount increase” refers to a resolution that amended the tentative budget – reducing tax levy.
A 2008 committee vote to “collect sales tax from nonprofits” appears to be an early draft of a resolution that never made it before the full board.
An item labeled “sales tax collection increase” for 2009 refers to in uptick in sales tax revenue that the county took in that year.
Two votes, labeled “true value tax rate increase,” were in fact votes to revise the tax rate downward.
Another “true value tax rate” item refers to Cobb’s vote against an amendment to decrease the tax rate further than legislators had already agreed, in November 2010. Both Republicans and other Democrats also opposed that amendment.
The bigger picture
Clinton County administrator Mike Zurlo in Plattsburgh explained that local officials have to deal with rising costs from year to year, often because of mandates from the state government in Albany. “It’s difficult!” Zurlo said. “In Clinton County, I believe the largest nine of state mandates consume literally over 100 percent of our tax levy. So they exceed our tax levy. So we have to make up the difference with other revenue sources.”
We reached out to Congresswoman Stefanik about these factual errors, and she declined to speak with us.
Cobb, meanwhile, has pushed back in interviews, press releases and on social media.
She told NCPR that paying for local government is a challenge. “You know, in St Lawrence County or any local government – when you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the sheriffs department running and mental health and public health and social services and your roads and bridges – you have to make sure that you’re being as fiscally responsible as possible while providing those services,” Cobb said. She added that her Republican opponent is trying to mislead voters.
“I never voted to raise the sales tax. That is patently false,” Cobb said. “My record and I stand by it was to protect the people in St Lawrence County. To safeguard that money for the benefit of our community. And you will see by those votes that they were often led by the whole board or completely bipartisan. So again, Elise Stefanik has chosen to twist that record and to create a false narrative.”
Errors on both sides
Stefanik has unleashed other attack ads since then – including one that falsely claims Cobb was an appointee of Governor Andrew Cuomo doing anti-corruption work.
True or false, attack ads can be effective and Cobb appears to lack the campaign cash to fire back with her own advertisements. With just over a month to Election Day, Cobb so far hasn’t hit the airwaves with any advertisements of her own.
The Democrat has issued press releases attacking Stefanik for her voting record and her behavior. Those have also occasionally included factually wrong statements.
Over the weekend, Cobb’s team sent a statement to the Sun newspaper claiming Stefanik missed a picnic held for veterans every year in Johnstown.
In fact, Stefanik was at the picnic. She tweeted photographs of herself meeting with voters.
