Overview
Oswego County's adopted 2026 budget is $276,781,578, up 3.7% from 2025. The General Fund real property tax levy is $48,505,860 against a county full value of $9,967,095,037, producing a generic tax rate of $4.87 per $1,000 — down 5.4% ($0.28). The budget complies with the New York State property tax cap and allocates $1,080,000 of unappropriated fund balance to reach the cap, $670,000 less than in 2025. State and federal mandates account for 90% of the total tax burden.
Source: Oswego County 2026 Adopted Budget, Administrator's transmittal message.
At a glance — adopted budget 2026
What makes up the tax levy
Mandated levies named in the transmittal. Medicaid alone is $25,251,590, or 52% of the General Fund levy, and 46% of all tax levies combined. The three mandated levies below are components of the levy, not a breakdown that sums to it.
| Medicaid mandate | $25,251,590 |
| Workers' compensation mandate | $1,892,430 |
| Community college mandate | $5,034,134 |
Cost drivers named in the transmittal: mandated retirement up $1,994,533 (21.1%), mandated health insurance up $2,192,143 (13.7%), and contractual labor up $3,549,366 (4.4%). Offsetting measures included forecasting sales tax revenues closer to historic actuals, reducing department requests, reforming how CHIPs expenses and revenues are budgeted, and a $1.6 million net county cost decrease in Social Services.
Source: Oswego County 2026 Adopted Budget, Administrator's transmittal message.
Elected officials
| Chairman, County Legislature | James Weatherup |
| County Administrator / Budget Officer | Philip Church |
| Budget Director | Veronica Turner |
Sources & notes
- Only source used: Oswego County, 2026 Adopted Budget book, Administrator's transmittal message (December 11, 2025). 2026 Adopted Budget (PDF).
- Sum checks: none available beyond the transmittal's own statements — the book's fund-summary table did not extract legibly, so no breakdown is claimed to sum to $276,781,578. The Medicaid share (52% of the General Fund levy) and the 90% mandate share of the tax burden are the transmittal's own characterizations.
- What is not claimed: no departmental or fund-level appropriations are shown; federal revenues are described in the transmittal as down slightly in 2026, with full-year federal reductions expected to hit in 2027.
- Jurisdiction palette: no verified Oswego County palette was on file, so this page uses the neutral Hometown Numbers dark-glass theme rather than a county color.