Astorino's Housing Fight Cost Westchester At Least $24 Million

Pete Harckham’s opponent in his race for re-election to the New York State Senate, Rob Astorino, cost Westchester residents nearly $40 million while he was county executive with his reckless and foolhardy fight against fair and affordable housing, including close to $25 million in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds.

Another $15 million in direct aid following Hurricane Sandy was lost because of Astorino’s “ongoing civil rights noncompliance," which is part of a disturbing pattern that continues even today with the now self-proclaimed “Trump translator” defending the president’s “very fine people” comments about white supremacists.

The lost CDBG funding alone represents about a 5% increase in taxes to homeowners and businesses in terms of the Westchester County tax levy, as well as serious revenue losses to non-profit organizations and municipalities.

At the time, Astorino just shrugged off the lost funding, and said, “Now it’s gone, and we’re out of it going forward.” Indeed, between 2015-2017 Astorino no longer pursued U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) contracts or CDBG funding, costing the county even more untold millions of grants aimed at new housing or infrastructure improvements.

“Astorino’s fight with the federal government cost Westchester taxpayers dearly,” said Ben Boykin, chair of the Westchester County Board of Legislators. “Plus he wasted another $4.3 million for the county’s legal expenses—again, with taxpayers footing the bills. And when you add up the costs from his ‘borrow from tomorrow’ budgeting schemes, it is easy to understand why Astorino is not running on his fiscal record.”

The fiscal record that Astorino rather not own up to includes leaving Westchester County with an $81 million five-year structural deficit, draining the County’s fund balance by $201 million and increasing the County’s debt to $1.6 billion.

In a desperate attempt to pay for some of his budget mistakes, Astorino cut childcare funding for working families, causing family members to leave jobs and seek mandated family assistance programs instead. Now, he’s saying that childcare slots were increased during his administration—without mentioning that the County Board of Legislators managed to add those slots by overriding his veto.