Legislative Gazette
Albany
Gov. Andrew Cuomo campaigned heavily on property tax relief, made a tax cap the subject of his first program bill and is now touring the state drumming up public support for the cap and other priorities. But a division in philosophy between legislative leaders makes passage of a cap this session less than a certainty.
Last week, Republicans from the Senate and Assembly gathered in The Well of the Legislative Office Building to push Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. But a shouting match between supporters and opponents — mostly members of the education lobby — showed how divisive the issue has become.
As Senate Education Committee Chairman John Flanagan and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb and several of his conference members rallied a small crowd of about 40 supporters on the relief a tax cap would bring, more than 100 members of the New York State United Teachers attempted to drown out the speakers with hisses, boos and chants of “tax the rich,” calling for an extension of the tax surcharge on higher income brackets and a different measure of property tax relief known as a circuit breaker.
“It really makes a difference when you can shout someone down because you have more numbers,” said Kolb, R-Canandaigua.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Rockville Centre, has repeatedly called on the Assembly to pass the tax cap bill as is since the Senate eagerly passed the governor’s program bill Jan. 31. Skelos has said he won’t negotiate on the bill because it remains as the governor intends and says he has done all he can to push the bill forward, putting the onus on the Assembly to finish the job.
The bill, S.2706/A.3982, would cap property tax levies at 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Local voters could choose to override the tax cap on school district spending if 60 percent of district voters approve the higher levy.
The Assembly floor appears to be the final frontier in this session’s tax cap saga. Silver has said the issue will “eventually” be dealt with this session but has shown no hurry in doing so. Kolb and his conference have repeatedly called on the speaker to allow the bill to be voted on.
“While I applaud the governor for his continued leadership, it’s important that he utilize the bully pulpit to challenge the Assembly to act,” said Skelos in a statement released May 10.
During the first stop on his People First Tour in Syracuse, the governor called Skelos’ stance “Albany speak,” saying the job is not done until a tax cap becomes law. By decrying Skelos’ position that his job was completed when his house passed the bill, Cuomo appeared to be opening the issue, and his bill, to negotiation.
Perhaps the more eye-opening aspect of Cuomo’s distancing himself from Skelos’ stance is that it gives credence to two notions: one being that the Senate majority actually does not want the tax cap to pass, as Democratic lawmakers have suggested; the second being that the goal of the tax cap legislation is to appear to address a hot button issue rather than an institution of real reform.
Whispers in Albany, pushed by Democratic legislators, suggest the Senate majority wants to keep the issue alive heading into the next election cycle and are worried that negative effects on school districts — with the teacher lobby issuing dramatic warnings — would give local legislators an opening to gun for their seats.
Ulster County Legislator Susan Zimmet, D-New Paltz, backed up the notion that Republicans want the issue of the cap more than the cap itself, based on conversations she said she had with unnamed Republican senators following the one-house passage of the bill and called the cap “the greatest scam I’ve ever seen.”
“The night they voted for the tax cap I had a number of Republican senators coming over to me saying don’t worry about it, this is not what it’s going to end up being,” said Zimmet. “Most of the senators understand, even the ones who voted for the cap, without mandate relief and a lot of other things taking place, it’s going to devastate their local communities. They voted for something for political reasons and now there’s a chance [it passes].”
Karen Scharff, executive director of Citizen Action New York, called the proposed 2 percent cap “one more fake Albany quick fix,” an idea echoed by other advocates who called the proposal “simplistic,” “shortsighted” and a “Kool-Aid cap.”
“It is a sound bite, not sound policy,” said Assemblywoman Ellen Jaffee, D-Suffern, at a press conference with others pushing the circuit breaker mere hours after the tax cap rally. The press conference also featured Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, D-Ithaca, and a host of good government groups, education lobbyists and business and tax reform coalitions.
Throughout the debate, there has been general agreement among interested parties that a property tax cap must be coupled by relief of unfunded state mandates on localities. Kolb underscored the importance of mandate relief, calling it the “800-pound gorilla” in the room.
While opposition to Cuomo’s bill warns of passing the cap without instituting mandate relief, Kolb and other tax cap proponents have said passing the cap is important in forcing the conversation on mandate relief to be taken seriously.
The New York State Association of Counties, whose key priorities include relieving the state’s counties of unfunded mandates such as Medicaid, indigent defense and early childhood intervention programs, maintains that property tax relief won’t come from a cap but from mandate relief.
“By and large our membership consensus is that there needs to be mandate relief and property tax relief will follow,” said association spokesman Mark LaVigne. “What you’re doing when you pass a property tax cap before mandate relief is causing a crisis and saying then we’ll deal with the crisis when it happens.”
LaVigne added that unfunded state mandates are the root cause of county property tax increases and said only discussions between local governments and the state can fix the problem.
“So much of our property tax levy goes to funding state programs. So when we address those state programs by reducing their costs for counties, then we can begin reversing the trend of high property taxes from the county perspective,” he said.
Flanagan, R-East Northport, dismissed the idea that the tax cap would restrict the ability of school districts to raise enough funding through tax levies.
“I don’t buy that theory,” said Flanagan, who told supporters at the rally the cap would force districts to take a look at administrative salaries and added afterwards that it would be the state’s job to ensure education funding remained at an appropriate level if a cap was instituted.
Kolb also dismissed the notion that the cap would tie the hands of localities, saying a measure in the bill that allows school districts to opt out of the cap by a 60 percent vote assures local flexibility. The advocates counter the supermajority override vote favors wealthy districts and the bill leaves out many necessary exemptions.
Kolb, who has maintained a similar but not identical position to Skelos in calling for Silver to allow the vote to hit the floor, said an Assembly floor vote should be the catalyst for any negotiations on the bill.
“If we keep introducing new ideas, new measures, new approaches, you never get a vote on the main issue,” said Kolb. “I want to know where the Assembly Democrats stand on the bill … then I want to hear what Governor Cuomo has to say in response to that.”
Kolb, however, says all of that might not be necessary as he believes there are enough Democrats in the Assembly in support of the cap to pass it, although some Democrats remain committed to their circuit breaker plan.
“We need to reduce property taxes in New York state, not just cap their growth,” said Lifton, pointing to California schools she said sank from tops in the nation to the bottom of the barrel following similar tax cap legislation.
The circuit breaker, however, appears to have little chance of a legislative revival in this Albany climate. Ron Deutsch of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness said the best way to fund the approximately $1 billion needed for the circuit breaker would be an extension of the millionaires tax. Since day one of his administration, Cuomo has maintained he would not extend the surcharge and the Senate majority has adamantly opposed such a move.
