BY JIMMY LAWTON

North Country This Week

OGDENSBURG – Ogdensburg’s plan to preempt St. Lawrence County on sales tax is moving to the state level.

Sen. Patty Ritchie, R-Heuvelton, has introduced home rule legislation that would allow the city to keep 1 percent of the sales tax generated within the city limits. Assemblyman Mark Walczyk is preparing to introduce similar legislation in the Assembly.

That’s on top of the city’s preemption efforts that will allow it to keep 1.5 percent of the sales tax generated there.

The sales tax collection situation is complicated.

In many counties, sales tax is 7 percent. The county keeps 3 percent and the state takes 4 percent.

In 2013, St. Lawrence County used home rule legislation to raise sales tax to 8 percent, of which the county keeps half.

Now, of the 4 percent the county collects, it shares 3 percent with the towns, villages and city using one formula, and a second formula is used for the 1 percent approved in 2013.

For the first 3 percent, the county keeps half and gives Ogdensburg 6.44 percent, with the towns and villages splitting 43.65 percent.

For the additional 1 percent, the county keeps 83 percent, Ogdensburg gets 6.44 percent and the towns and villages split 10.56 percent.

By pre-empting, the county will likely no longer share sales tax with the city, but the city will keep a total of 2.5 percent of all sales taxes collected within the city limits.

City manager Stephen Jellie said the city considered keeping the sales tax at 7 percent as a way to attract shoppers to the city, but he said that because no state data exists to estimate how much sales tax will be generated after pre-emption, the city is erring on the side of caution for now.

He said the state comptroller has been unable to provide him with figures on how much sales tax is generated in the city and has refused to share data about 2020 sales tax collections from businesses countywide that could be used to generate those numbers.

He has been able to secure those numbers for 2019, which will be crunched to aid in budgeting for 2022.

Jellie says the goal is to collect at least $4 million. That’s about how much the city collected under the formula used by the county. The reason the city opted to pre-empt sales tax was because the county has signaled it planned to change the formula in a way that would have significantly reduced the city’s share.

The two entities attempted to negotiate a deal, but after failure to come to a mutually beneficial agreement, Ogdensburg decided to strike out on its own.

The legislation introduced in the senate and assembly will pave the way for Ogdensburg to move forward. Typically home rule legislation like this moves though the state without resistance, since it only impacts the areas represented by those introducing the measures.

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