AUBURN - Property taxes are too high in upstate New York, according to a candidate for U.S. Congress. One way to reduce them would be to force the state to take on the full cost of Medicaid, the candidate announced Monday.

Dale Sweetland, the Republican running for the state's 25th District, told local officials during a press conference that, if elected, he will propose legislation to do just that.

According to Sweetland, there is a loophole in a federal law that allows the state to impose Medicaid costs onto its county governments through unfunded mandates. If the loophole is fixed and the state assumes those costs, local taxpayers will save hundreds or thousands of dollars a year, Sweetland claimed.

“High property taxes are major contributors to disincentives for businesses and people to (stay in or relocate to) New York and upstate New York,” Sweetland said during a small press conference in front of the Cayuga County office building on Genesee Street.

Sweetland said more than half of the tax levy in Onondaga County - $92 million out of $180 million - was devoted to Medicaid when he was on the Onondaga County Legislature. Cayuga County will pay more than $12.7 million this year for state Medicaid mandates, according to Cayuga County Manager Wayne Allen. That is almost 40 percent of the tax levy.

That number is expected to rise to $13.2 million, Allen said.

Those kinds of numbers are “ridiculous,” Sweetland said.

“When the state gets into fiscal trouble, it finds a way to push costs off to local governments,” he said.

Not everyone agrees with Sweetland. According to his opponent, Democratic candidate Dan Maffei, this plan would do nothing to lower the tax burden.

Maffei spokesman Michael Whyland stated Monday that the candidate's plan to increase federal funding of education would do more to lower property taxes by taking financial burden off of local school districts. The Maffei campaign issued a statement in June supporting a proposal in the House of Representatives to give $6.4 billion to schools around the country in need of renovations and to bring them up to environmental standards.

Whyland called Sweetland's proposal a “political, feel-good gimmick” that could end up costing local taxpayers money, not saving it.

“Property taxpayers need real relief, not hollow political rhetoric that does nothing to lower our tax burden,” Whyland said.

Yet, the state is able to raise Medicaid costs by 3 percent every year while forcing municipalities to support the programs, County Legislator George Fearon said after the conference. And the taxpayers who are in poorer municipalities end up feeling more of the financial pain, he said.

“(The state) needs to feel the pain,” Fearon said.

Staff writer Christopher Caskey can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or christopher.caskey@lee.net.