Local Governments Face Fiscal Peril, State Comptroller Warns

Local governments across New York State are collecting less in taxes, burning through their cash reserves and running up deficits, according to a report released Wednesday by the state comptroller.

The report by the comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli, cast long-term doubt on the financial health of many municipalities in the state, which are faced with anemic revenues and fewer remaining ways to cut costs.

And it offered another sobering prospect to local officials who have worried aloud in recent months that some of the state’s largest city governments may soon be unable to make ends meet.

But Richard L. Brodsky, a former assemblyman who was a writer of a recent report on the troubled finances of Yonkers, said cities that had improved their financial planning and forsaken gimmicks found that within the next few years, they would be unable to close their projected budget gaps.

Mr. Brodsky predicted that “New York will see what California has already seen,” with localities simply unable to make the budget math work.

“You’ve got an unsolvable problem,” he said, “which logically takes you to the consequences of that, which are bankruptcy, bailout or control board. That’s where the mayors are. That’s the conversation they’re having.”