ALBANY COUNTY —  At $902.2 million, Albany County Executive Daniel McCoy’s proposed budget for 2026 is 6.38 percent higher than this year’s adopted county spending plan. 

McCoy’s executive budget, his 12th, is under the state-set levy limit for the 12th year in a row; the tax rate has decreased each of the past 12 years. 

The county tax rate will drop from about $2.73 per $1,000 of assessed value this year to about $2.56 per $1,000 in 2026. McCoy, a Democrat, noted that the tax rate had dropped significantly in his time as county executive, from $3.95 per $1,000 of assessed value in 2014.

“Since the budget increase is more than $50 million, it is imperative that the Republican conference carefully review spending. That's our role as watchdogs,” Mark Grimm, a Republican who represents part of Guilderland in the county legislature, told The Enterprise by email.

“Recent moves by Legislature Chair Joanne Cunningham to prevent transparency and silence more input must be resisted so we can do our jobs properly on behalf of taxpayers,” Grimm went on. “Development of the St. Rose property remains a mystery. We need a clearer idea of what to do there and hopefully bring in more private development to create more tax-paying entities.”

Revenue

McCoy is projecting $346 million in sales-tax revenue for Albany County in 2026, which is down from the 2025 proposed and adopted projection of approximately $376 million.

Actual sales receipts from the first three fiscal quarters of this year are down two-thirds of 1 percent from the same period last year, from $276.2 million in 2024 to $274.3 million in 2025. The county’s total sales-tax haul for 2024 was $370.3 million.

Property taxes are expected to generate close to $106 million in revenue, up from $103.8 this year

About $105 million is expected from the state and about $103 million from the federal government.

Asked by The Enterprise how the county will be affected by the federal government’s current propensity for taking away funding for programs in states not won by the president, McCoy said Albany County wouldn’t feel those impacts until 2027. 

The county is expecting to receive almost $72 million from department and miscellaneous income in 2026, which includes fees charged by the county clerk, public-health fees, civic-center revenues, fees charged to other governments for boarding prisoners at the county jail, and income collected by the county nursing home for residential care.

No reserves or money from the fund balance are needed to plug holes in next year’s budget. 

Expenditures 

Among the largest appropriations in the proposed 2026 budget are:

— Economic assistance and opportunity, including social services, medical assistance, and children and family services, $288.6 million;

— General government operations, $258.9 million;

— Distribution of sales tax to local municipalities, $138.4 million;

— Public safety, including the sheriff’s office, county jail, and probation office, $128.3 million.

Asked about setting up an EMS district that would include each of the Hilltowns, New Scotland, and Voorheesville — a project that area municipalities have been trying to get off the ground for a few years now — McCoy told The Enterprise, “I didn’t want to get into a taxing district through the county. I was in favor of them setting one up that we did not control and have to raise taxes, because then it’s just going to seem like I’m raising taxes.”

He went on, “EMS is expensive. It’s a necessary expense, don't get me wrong. But you see like Voorheesville shut theirs down and the sheriff took it over. That’s an expense to me.”

McCoy said he was all for an EMS district akin to districts for fire protection.

— Health and mental-health services, $60.5 million; and

— Education, $44 million. ​

McCoy’s 2026 budget proposes funding for 2,899 positions — 1,931 overseen by his office and 968 overseen by the county’s other elected officials — an increase of 88 over this year. 

“I’ve cut over 400 positions out over the last 15 years, right-sized the ship,” McCoy told The Enterprise. He went on to say that the county “looked at how we bought pencils, how we bought toilet paper. I mean, we really revamped everything we’ve done in county government to make it more efficient.”

McCoy said, “When I took over, we were borrowing $15 million a year to make payroll, which people are like, ‘What?’ Yeah, we were borrowing $15 million a year to make payroll.”

Asked what accounted for the bloat — for example, was it a vestige of the old O’Connell machine handing out jobs to good soldiers — and what he did about it, McCoy said, “It was just jobs that over time, as you see with AI, these positions became obsolete. Or, you didn’t really need that position anymore, or you could have someone else do that job. One person could do both jobs.

“So, as we efficiently looked at positions and how we delivered services, we got smart about it and started looking at things differently.”