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St. Lawrence County on state comptroller’s short list of ‘fiscally distressed’ local governments

Posted 9/25/14

St. Lawrence County and the Town of Pierrepont are on this year’s state comptroller’s list of municipalities in potential fiscal difficulty. St. Lawrence County is designated as under …

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St. Lawrence County on state comptroller’s short list of ‘fiscally distressed’ local governments

Posted

St. Lawrence County and the Town of Pierrepont are on this year’s state comptroller’s list of municipalities in potential fiscal difficulty.

St. Lawrence County is designated as under “significant fiscal stress” with a score of 72.5 percent on a scale that looks for things like low fund balances, patterns of operating deficits and limited cash on hand.

Other criteria include broader demographic information like population trends, poverty and unemployment.

Based on 2013 financial statements, St. Lawrence County and nine other entities have received the highest designation of “significant fiscal stress,” including the counties of Rockland, Monroe, St. Lawrence and Schuyler.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli calls the list an “early warning system.”

The Town of Pierrepont, with a fiscal stress score of 50.8 percent, which puts it in the “susceptible to fiscal stress” category. The score in the current report is up significantly from last year’s calculation of Pierrepont 41.3 percent.

The Fiscal Stress Monitoring System and resulting fiscal stress designations rely on data from annual financial reports submitted by local governments to the Office of the State Comptroller. This year’s report covers conditions in municipalities with fiscal years that run through the end of 2013.

St. Lawrence county's fiscal score last year, the first time such a list was compiled, was calculated at 70.8 percent, also in the “significant stress” category. That is 1.7 percent better than this year’s rating.

The report also says the county’s “environmental score” is 17.5 percent. The most common environmental indicators among stressed municipalities are increases in child poverty, high unemployment and decreases in state and federal aid, according to the report.

The report also says the Village of Canton and the towns of Clifton and Rossie have not filed data needed to calculate their scores.

These municipalities did not file an annual financial report or reported data that was inconclusive for the purposes of this list as of the date their score was to be calculated.

Faring best in St. Lawrence County with a stress score of 0.0 percent are the villages of Gouverneur and Norwood and the towns of DeKalb, Fowler, Hopkinton, and Pitcairn. The Village of Waddington is next at 1.7 percent.