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SCHENECTADY COUNTY
Hike in store scanner fees criticized
Cost of item-pricing exemption will increase by 50 percent
BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporter

    A statewide trade advocacy group and some Schenectady County legislators are calling excessive a major increase over the last three years in the fee the county charges businesses seeking an exemption from having to place stickers on all boxes, bottles and cans on their shelves.
    On Thursday, the county Legislature increased the fee by 50 percent, to $3,000, effective Jan. 1. Two years earlier, it had increased the same fee to $2,000, from $400. The $400 fee had been in effect since the county passed its Item Pricing Law in 2000.
    Minority Leader Robert Farley, R-Glenville, called the latest fee increase “another tax. I don’t see a real reason to do it. There is no justification, we just raised it.”
    James Buhrmaster, R-Glenville, agreed: “I thought it was a bad idea. It’s a total disincentive for people who want to do business in the county.”
    The county law allows a store with checkout scanners to obtain a waiver from having to place pricing stickers on products, a time-consuming, labor-intensive process. In return for the waiver, the store can use shelf tags listing the unit price. Before it issues a waiver, the county tests the accuracy of the store scanner, insuring it rings up the same price on the item contained on the shelf tag.
    State law requires each store to pass two scanner accuracy tests at 98 percent each year to qualify for the waiver. What makes Schenectady County different from other counties is that it conducts an accuracy test each month in each store with a waiver, said Todd Godlewski, director of the county’s Department of Weights and Measures.
    Godlewski said the fee increase is necessary to cover the county’s cost to conduct scanner accuracy tests each month. “The increase will be revenue neutral. If you only did two, we would not need to change it,” he said. The county has conducted monthly inspections since the law’s passage in 2000, he said.
    The fee increase is expected to raise $105,000 in 2008 for the Department of Weights and Measures. The department assigns one inspector to conduct the accuracy tests; inspectors will earn between $33,000 and $44,000 in 2008.
    Scanner accuracy inspections cost the county $85,000 in 2007, or $15,000 more than the current $2,000 fee per store generated, Godlewski said.
    James Rodgers, president of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, called monthly scanner accuracy testing by the county “a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars and absolutely not what the law requires, as I understand the law.”
    The alliance represents 850 retail and wholesale grocery stores in the state. Any store with a scanner is eligible to receive a waiver.
    “Using an inspection waiver fee to generate excessive county revenue goes beyond the scope of the fee’s intent and purpose. Additionally, it sends a wrong message to the business community that Schenectady is ‘open to business’ when unbridled and unwarranted fees are charged to retailers,” Rodgers wrote in a Oct. 23 letter to County Manager Kathleen Rooney.
    In 2003, former Weights and Measures Director Douglas Briggs calculated the cost of an inspection at $801 per location, based on a $400 fee per waiver.
    At that time, Briggs wanted the Legislature to raise the fee to $1,500; the Legislature raised it to $2,000. The monthly inspections, therefore, cost the county $31,259 annually. At that time, there were 39 waivers, four more than currently issued, generating $15,600 in fees and leaving a $15,600 deficit.
    Rodgers said he conducted an informal survey of other counties that offer waivers and determined their staffs spend between two to four hours conducting surveys. Based on these numbers, and using the two tests advocated under state law, he said Schenectady County’s hourly rate exceeds $500 per hour.
    “It is way, way out of synch for Schenectady County to conduct a test at $500 per hour,” Rodgers said.
    According to Rodgers, “The county should only return if there is a customer complaint; there is no reason for them to conduct monthly checks. Why are they doing what no other county does?”
    Godlewski’s answer: “We do it repeatedly to ensure compliance and accuracy. I wouldn’t say it is overkill. It is a good number of inspections.”
    The county issued 35 waivers, out of 110 stores, in 2007, and visits each of the 35 stores once a month, Godlewski said. He expects to issue a similar number of waivers in 2008. All the major supermarkets and discount drugstores have waivers, as do some locally owned stores such as Gabriel’s Super Market, he said. Rudy Gabriel, co-owner of Gabriel’s, shrugged off the fee increase: “What can you say? It’s Schenectady; it’s a cost of doing business. If that is what the county needs to survive, then you have to pay it.”
    The county also checks stores without waivers for item pricing accuracy, but it does not charge a fee for the inspection, Godlewski said. He said he is considering the creation of a fee to cover these inspections.
    Godlewski said state law sets a minimum of two tests but there is no maximum. “Each individual county has to determine the ethicality of the law and determine to what extent it feels is reasonable to making sure things are priced accurately,” he said.
    Monthly visits have benefi ted consumers in the county, Godlewski said. “If you go back to the beginning of the law in 2000, the compliance rate has gone up and up,” he said.
    Large stores have, on average, more than 20,000 pieces of items and shelf tags, in addition to seasonal items, Godlewski said. “They are always changing. It would be foolish on my part to check it once at beginning of the year and at end. As far as consumers go, that is one of the primary reasons we are out there.”
    The county Department of Weights and Measures assigns one employee to conduct full-time item-pricing and scanner-accuracy inspections.
    Under county guidelines, the inspector lays out the entire store into categories and takes a sample from each section, collecting between 50 and 100 samples total. The inspector registers each item into a hand-held gun, then goes to the register, prints out roll of tape that shows the UPC code and checks it against scanner equipment for accuracy.
    The employee can spend up to eight hours in a large store and half that time in a smaller store, Godlewski said. “He is doing this eight hours a day, every day.”
    In 2007, the department received 100 complaints of scanner inaccuracies and leveled approximately $5,000 in fines, mostly against smaller stores, Godlewski said. “None of it is malicious,” he said. “The norm is compliance, but that is because the stores know we are in there on a monthly basis.”
    Should an inspection uncover a problem, the county will work with the store manager or corporate office to correct it before it becomes chronic, Godlewski said.
    The county’s fee is “not the highest in state. There are other counties that charge based on square feet, some charge $5,000 to $7,500 for the waiver,” Godlewski said.
    Rodgers said Nassau County’s fee is $5,000, calling it not “related to anything but to raise money for the budget.” He said Rockland County’s fee is $7,500. He said the industry is willing to underwrite the fee so it is not a cost to taxpayers.

Just another tax.  You think this comes out of Neil Golub's pocket?  or Rudy Gabriel?  Nope, it comes right out of their employees and customers pockets.  And who can afford this?  Just the big companies, which is WHY we're losing smaller business in this county.

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James Rodgers, president of the Food Industry Alliance of New York State, called monthly scanner accuracy testing by the county “a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars and absolutely not what the law requires, as I understand the law.”

No kidding... DUH!

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Todd Godlewski, director of the county’s Department of Weights and Measures.

There's the problem right there.  Wonder if he's related to Bob "No Change" Godlewski.  One thing's for sure.  There won't be any change for you when you go into a store that has the waiver.  Maybe we should try to go to stores that don't pay this fee.  Besides, if the county is losing money with each of these checks, maybe its better to have less of them.

You are absolutely correct there BK. The cost is just a way of Schenectady trying to get more money from the taxpayers. They are so grossly negligent in the area of budgeting money. They create programs and jobs on monies that aren't even available. Such as the proposed mortgage sales tax. So now they know that people have to eat, so what the hell, tax the businesses that provide the necessities with a ridiculous scanner fee and then the businesses can pass it right on to us.

I wonder if the anyone in the city council knows the words....'CUT SPENDING'!

Quoted from bumblethru

I wonder if the anyone in the city council knows the words....'CUT SPENDING'!

Bumble, This is county, not city.  This affects all the county.

OOPS! Okay than, has the county and all involved not learned the words CUT SPENDING?

Quoted from bumblethru

OOPS! Okay than, has the county and all involved not learned the words CUT SPENDING?

It's a Godlewski, what do YOU think?

Can you hear me slapping me upside the head! GODLEWSKI...of course!

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EDITORIALS
Grocers must pay for scanner accuracy checks

    Schenectady County retailers have never been too crazy about the law, passed several years ago, that requires them to put price tags on all packaged goods. So it’s understandable that they also dislike part of the same law that forces them to pony up if they want to be exempted from the law, which they can be if they use shelf tags that accurately display the items’ prices. But the law was absolutely necessary for consumers, and the revenue that stores pay for exemptions covers the cost of compliance inspections, which are also necessary.
    However, a fair question that retailers are asking is whether the county is being greedy: charging more for the exemptions than it really needs to cover its costs, or conducting more tests than are really necessary. Its fee just went up a fairly steep 50 percent, to $3,000 per year. And considering that it went from $400 to $2,000 in 2005, it’s not surprising that the head of a statewide retailer’s lobby is crying foul.
    The county’s Department of Weights and Measures says the increases are justified because it’s keeping a close eye on the stores — monitoring prices in each one that has an exemption once per month. That’s far more often than the twice a year mandated by state law, and probably unnecessary for stores that pass with flying colors every month. (To pass, a store’s scanner must be consistent with the shelf tag prices on 98 percent of all items checked.) The county might want to consider less-frequent testing for stores that get three perfect tests in a row. That might allow it to trim its costs, which are roughly $100,000 per year to cover the 35 stores that have been granted exemptions. (The department uses one person full-time at a cost of $43,000, plus another at 20 percent of $55,000; then there are benefits and other costs shared with other departments.)
    The bottom line is, though, that if the department is going to err, better that it be on the side of caution. A store that overcharges on even one or two items out of every 100 it sells is still ripping off its customers. It’s almost impossible for a consumer to spot such an overcharge without a photographic memory or a price tag, so the burden of proof needs to remain on the retailer who insists he doesn’t need item pricing.

So, whoever the Dem is that wrote this doesn't see how the shopper who is actually buying the items should at all be responsible for knowing how much their own groceries should be costing.

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County right to verify grocery scanner accuracy

    In response to Michael Lamendola’s Dec. 25 article, “Hike in store scanner fees criticized”: I finally get to say bravo for Schenectady County!
    Finally to hear that someone in government is making a concerted effort to protect citizens. I am so grateful that someone is a full-time watch dog, hired to help keep stores honest.
    How many of us have gone into stores for that prized sale item only to get home and find we paid regular price? How many of us have gone into a store five or more days into a sale only to find a sale item is still ringing up incorrectly? How many people paid full price when they shouldn’t have? How much wrongful profit did the stores make before someone was there, watching over them, to ensure they charge the price they are advertising?
    I found the accusation by Food Industry Alliance of New York State President James Rogers. alluding to Schenectady County charging “over $500 an hour” for their services, a bit insane. Thirty-five stores multiplied by $3,000 is $105,000 — seems about right for a full-time field employee and the administrative staff needed to do the job.
    Which counties did he compare Schenectady to? Oh, yes, ones he “informally investigated,” that don’t do this activity full-time. And how many stores do they monitor — he didn’t say. Nor how often they discovered violations. An employee changing prices on hundreds or thousands of individual items each week; I wonder how much that costs a store? I suspect it’s more than $3,000 annually.
    And how inconvenient and embarrassing is it for a price check on an item not marked? Challenging the amount holds up the line for everyone while a price is verified. About 50 percent of the time, I find I was right about their scanner being wrong. But don’t I feel oh so petty having held everyone up for the 50 cents. So much worse when they were right because I looked at the wrong unit tag (most likely located improperly beneath a different item).
    If only nursing homes had the same policy and concerted effort, I might feel not so terrified to grow old.
    KARLA HOUST
    Scotia

The stores can either pay the high tax/fee what ever it is to subsidize the county welfare.....or...they can employ a Schenectady county resident at the minimum wage to put the stickers on the items.......just another string for the government to pluck.....

The government is an eating machine...it eats our money, it eats our time, it eats our food, it eats our gas, it eats our tolls, it eats our morals etc etc......