Very well put. My family still lives in Oneida County, they have a sales tax rate of 9.5%. It's outrageous, the county said they had to increase it to that much because of Medicaid spending. Well, to find out the County Exec. overestimated it by around 10 million dollars.
They have plans to decrease it in increments starting in December. Now this County Exec., a Republican, has plans to go to Albany as a State Senator to reduce taxes. What a joke.
Same experience here in Erie County. The Republican County Executive ran on the platform of cutting property taxes, and promptly did so. He then proceeded to spend down all of Erie County's reserves, until he was faced with a property tax hike (which he adamantly refused to do) or raising the sales tax to 9.25%. It took the Legislature almost a year to do the sales tax hike. While Erie County was "poor," Mr. Giambra saw fit to steer contracts (for example, a furniture buying spree from a childhood friend) and patronage positions to his political supporters and his family. The prototypical example is Mr. Giambra's $80k/yr. personal driver, who just happened to be another childhood friend.
Even funnier - even though the name "Giambra" is radioactive around Buffalo, he still is considering running for Congress. Denial is not just a river in Egypt, I guess.