ALBANY COUNTY — Both the county’s executive and the state’s governor talked on Friday about the huge revenue losses caused by the guidelines that were used to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

Albany County is facing up to a 12-percent drop in sales-tax revenues, the county’s executive Daniel McCoy, said at his Friday morning press briefing, resulting in a $30 million budget hole.

The New York State Association of Counties has put out a report on the potential economic impact of the coronavirus shutdown on county budgets, which says that, although a recession now seems inevitable, it’s depth and duration remain uncertain.

Sales tax is the largest source of locally-generated revenue in most New York State counties, accounting for 43 percent of local revenue, the report says. It has created both a milder and more severe scenario for the course of the economy rebounding.

In the milder scenario, NYSAC calculates, Albany County, which had $6.8 billion in taxable sales in 2018-19, would lose $382 million in taxable sales for the year for a loss of sales-tax revenues of about $11 million — a 4.1 percent decrease.

In the more severe scenario, sales tax revenue in the counties outside New York City would fall about 12 percent below the baseline, or approximately $1 billion on a full-year basis. In this more severe scenario, NYSAC calculates, Albany County would lose about $34 million in sales-tax revenues, a decrease of 12.5 percent.

Governor Andrew Cuomo said that state revenues are estimated to decline by $13.3 billion, or 14 percent, from the executive budget forecast. Additionally, revenues are estimated to decline by $61 billion over the financial plan period of financial year 2021 to 2024, Cuomo said. 

Also on Friday, two dozen State Assembly members, led by Patricia Fahy, called on New York’s senators and congress members to create a modern-day, New Deal-style Works Progress Administration similar to the jobs program that was created by the federal government under President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

“The facts are startling: nearly one-third of Americans under 35 have lost their jobs ...,” says the letter written by the State Assembly members. “The small business assistance funds are helping but will not be sufficient to re-employ millions of workers around the country. Let’s learn from what worked in the 1930s and launch a short-term 21st Century Works Progress Administration (WPA) — and fast.”

The letter goes on, “Let’s start with immediate needs, by hiring thousands to train as public health ‘contact tracers’ to stop the deadly spread of the coronavirus. The more the virus is traced, the more success there will be in stopping it and re-opening the economy. It’s short-term and labor-intensive tracing.

“Moving forward, investments in green infrastructure projects such as building retrofits, renewable energy generation, storage, and transmission construction, as well as habitat restoration will help build out a green workforce and jumpstart a long needed transition to clean energy.”

The assembly members also call for “provisions to put our creative professionals to work for America in the next stimulus package.”