Harckham Has Hurt 40th Senate District Taxpayers With His Decisions
Sen. Peter Harckham has repeatedly boasted that he voted against raising taxes and passed legislation that helped the Mahopac School District with forgiveness for a costly filing error made years ago. Simply put, it’s not accurate. He raised taxes at record speed, which directly affected many of our neighbors. If his point is that he could have raised taxes even more, that’s not exactly comforting.
Harckham intentionally omits that in the same budget he lauds granting the governor authority to cut all our school aid and aid to local municipalities by 20 percent, which would directly result in a property tax hike; siphoned away sales tax dollars from county governments to fill state budget gaps which results in a property tax hike; cut state program funding to county health departments, which again either cuts services or further increases property taxes; and he allowed the property tax relief program that was tied to the property tax cap to expire.
Anyone remember when some of us used to get a check from the state if our local governments complied with the tax cap? Wonder why that didn’t happen again? Yep, that’s because Pete Harckham ended it. Again, another tax hike from our illustrious state senator.
As if the above wasn’t bad enough, Pete Harckham then introduced a ridiculous bill that threatened to cut all state funding to the Mahopac School District if the district didn’t change its name and mascot.
This Election Day, let’s replace Pete Harckham with Rob Astorino – a proven tax fighter and public servant – as our next state senator.
Christopher Provenzano
Mahopac
