The Buffalo News

Buffalo, NY

Op-Ed By Citizen Action Board Member Jim Anderson

http://www.buffalonews.com/149/story/623425.html

Every day brings another headline about the devastating consequences resulting from the state’s ever-growing deficit, now estimated at $16 billion — cuts to schools and health care, SUNY tuition increases, state worker layoffs.

And, as a recent Citizen Action report documents, the budget hits people of color and the most vulnerable the hardest. While the proposed cuts have all been justified as necessary to balance the budget, we often ignore the fact that many of these cuts will result in additional costs in the future — human and fiscal — as kids denied after-school programs move into adulthood.

Education is perhaps the most dramatic example of the unfairness of the budget. Earlier this year, the Buffalo school superintendent announced that a proposed state aid cut translated into cuts of as many as 900 to 1,000 staff (although other alternatives were being considered). Despite 2007 state legislation to make the state school aid formula fairer, districts like Buffalo with large percentages of students of color are facing the greatest cuts.

There is an alternative to these nightmare scenarios. A “fair share tax reform” proposal that would raise personal income taxes on the roughly 3.5 percent of tax filers with a taxable income of more than $250,000 annually is now receiving serious consideration.

Contrary to what some opponents claim, this proposal is not about “soaking the rich.” Over the past 30 years, the state has reduced income tax rates on the wealthiest New Yorkers by more than 50 percent, forcing working-class families to carry more of the overall tax burden in the form of property and sales taxes.

Currently, the state’s highest marginal tax rate is 6.85 percent for those earning at least $40,000 annually, the same as those who make $4 million annually. When all taxes are added together, the richest 1 percent pay only 6.5 percent of their incomes in taxes while the bottom 20 percent pay 12.6 percent.

No one is saying this legislation is the only step necessary: Fair share will raise only about $6 billion. To address the rest of the deficit, we’ll need additional fee and tax increases to save state services. We’ve got to make sure that the federal stimulus dollars are mainly devoted to protecting critical human needs programs, and President Obama’s proposed budget deserves to be passed for the new aid it will bring. Regrettably, some cuts in state programs seem inevitable, although this should be our lowest priority.

Fair share deserves to be included in the final budget agreement, not only to fund critically needed state services, but as a matter of basic fairness. Yes, the state budget crisis forces us to make hard choices. I for one think that a small increase on the wealthy is a better alternative than breaking the promise we made in 2007 to our school children.

Jim Anderson is board president of the Western New York Chapter of Citizen Action of New York and a statewide board member of the Alliance for Quality Education.