ORANGE COUNTY, N.Y.—Orange County’s year-to-date sales tax revenue has performed nearly 10 percent below expectations, according to Kerry Gallagher, county finance commissioner, at the Ways and Means Committee meeting on April 22.
Sales tax is the single largest income for the growing Hudson Valley county, covering more than 40 percent of its budgeted expenses this year.
It also plays a sizable role in the day-to-day operations of 30 or so local municipalities, which share sales taxes with the county at fixed rates. For example, Middletown, the largest city in the county, attributes a quarter of its annual revenue to sales tax.
“This is not the information that we’d like to project, but this is the actual number,” Gallagher told county lawmakers. “We believe there is a lot of uncertainty right now.”…