It seems outrageous to me that the Times Union would characterize a 4 percent annual cap on tax increases as a "bind" on school districts accustomed to drawing nearly unlimited resources from the taxpayer. Thanks to the immense power wielded by labor and other pressure groups, the school budget election system in this state is rigged like a slot machine. Elections are held on the same day, so unions can blanket the mass media with "Vote yes on your school budget" advertising statewide. To add insult to injury, ......................http://timesunion.com/AspStori.....p;newsdate=6/27/2008
The tax cap means nothing. It's a matter of if you're going to pay Peter or Paul. Either way, you're going to pay the same amount (as a state), it's just a matter of who you make the check out to. The only way this would benefit any school district is if your spending goes up enough that your taxpayers don't have to pay an extra amount to the state more than the amount that the state is going to give your school district in aid to cover anything over the 4%.
Dont forget they are all wrapped up in the textbook industry and suppliers too........it's a very very closed system without competition(which might be good, have to think about that-especially with history and the indoctrination of the masses)...........unions overlap......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Senate passes property tax cap legislation Updated: 08/09/2008 07:22 AM By: Erin Billups
ALBANY, N.Y. -- The state Senate has passed Governor Paterson's property tax cap legislation.
Majority Leader Dean Skelos had called the senators back for a special session today to work on the bill.
The legislation caps the growth in school and local government property taxes to 4 percent a year -- unless school district voters overwhelmingly agree to exceed it.
The Assembly, however, won't consider it until members come back on Aug. 19.
Democrats and the powerful school unions that back them are expected to block the legislation, arguing that the state can't afford to lose out on school funding.
CAPITOL Teachers’ union exerts its clout BY MICHAEL GORMLEY The Associated Press
Local school budget votes were expected to be close last May in hard-pressed school districts in Erie County, Albany and Long Island’s Massapequa. Tensions were high among taxpayers facing rising gas and food prices and Gov. David Paterson had just recommended a 4-percent cap on growth of New York’s highest-in-the-nation property taxes. But those seeking to pass the budgets had an edge. The New York State United Teachers union, perhaps New York’s most powerful lobbying force, quietly cut $2.3 million in checks to its locals this spring, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group. The union annually sends more than $1 million to districts that expect close budget votes, local taxpayer opposition, or school board candidates who disagree with NYSUT’s lobbying goals. Frequently, it pays off. Almost $3,000 went to Lancaster, where the budget passed by 298 votes out of 2,298 cast; more than $2,000 went to Albany, where the budget passed by 320 votes out of 4,342 cast; and nearly $5,000 went to Massapequa, where the budget passed by 535 votes out of 5,325 cast. The results mirrored most of the 92 percent of the state’s 700 districts where budgets were approved, raising taxes beyond the rate of inflation. In the Hudson Valley’s Arlington school district, the budget was defeated by 341 votes out of 5,101 cast. NYSUT sent $7,254 to that rural district serving 10,400 students. “Spending a few thousand dollars on a school election is the equivalent of using a Howitzer on a mosquito,” said NYPIRG’s Blair Horner. NYSUT and its local unions aren’t required to report in state election records how the money was used. NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn said the local spending comes from a voluntary $1 assessment on each member’s paycheck, or about $20 a year for each of the union’s 220,000 active members. “Some of it gets rebated back to the locals,” Korn said. “It’s used to support pro-education candidates, for school budget campaigns or local political issues.” He said districts with particularly difficult budget votes or adversarial school board candidates can get more. NYSUT’s “solidarity fund” could also be tapped if needed for “pro-education candidates and to urge ‘yes’ votes on local school budgets.” NYSUT said the money pays for phone banks where volunteers can blanket a community with phone calls pushing their position, lawn signs and mailings to other NYSUT members who live in the community but work in another district. Only rarely is there an organized effort on the other side of the issue, and funding like NYSUT provides would be hard to counter in a local school district. The union’s local spending augments its annual $1 million TV and radio ad blitz statewide, urging passage of school budgets for their children’s’ sake because, as one 2006 ad put it, “it’s the right thing to do.” The local spending is magnified by the chronically low turnout, about 11 percent statewide, a number so small Gov. David Paterson in June called the votes an inaccurate reflection of the public will. Usually, unions must detail their spending campaign and lobbying records. For example, those records show NYSUT directly contributed more than $700,000 to legislators and political parties in 2007 and spent more than $1.8 million on lobbying that year. But school elections are governed instead by education law. “The fact that the union is spending millions of dollars to push its own interest shouldn’t be a surprise. But the public should know that,” NYPIRG’s Horner said. “The question is, should the public have that information when they go to the polls. The answer is, ‘Yes.’ ” “We know what they say [the money’s for], but we don’t know. It could be to vote ‘yes’ on the budget or for summer barbecues. Who knows?” Horner said. Last week, billionaire B. Thomas Golisano pledged $5 million to fund state Legislature candidates this fall willing to take on special interests, singling out NYSUT. He estimated, based on dues paid by NYSUT’s 600,000 workers and retirees in education and health care, that the union has $60 million worth of clout in Albany, pushing spending that has led to the high property taxes that drive employers away. “Nothing ever changes,” Golisano said. “And we’re here in this rut for two decades.”
Groups opposing property tax cap launch ad campaign The Business Review (Albany)
Two groups are launching a campaign against Gov. David Paterson's property tax cap plan.
The Working Families Party and the Alliance for Quality Education said Tuesday it was launching a major TV ad campaign against Paterson's plan.
The state Senate approved limits on property tax increases in a special session on Friday, along with several measures designed to cut costs for school districts.
New York property taxes have been a hot debate over the past several months, following Paterson's adoption of a recommended cap on annual property tax increases, an idea that riles powerful labor and education unions.
On Friday, the Senate passed Paterson's tax cap legislation, which limits annual property tax increases to 4 percent or 120 percent of the consumer price index, whichever is lower. A supermajority of a school district's voters can choose to override the cap at any time.
"Enacting a property tax cap is a good starting point, but it is only one piece of the puzzle," said Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, a downstate Republican.
The Senate also approved a two-year moratorium on property reassessments.
The actions carry little weight at this point, since the state Assembly was not in session. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) has voiced opposition to any tax cap that would decrease aid to school districts or handicap their ability to maintain and improve services.
Silver, and education unions, promote what's called a circuit breaker. Under such a plan, homeowners would only have to pay a certain portion of their property taxes; the state would then pay the rest.
"A tax cap is a gimmick that does nothing to lower property taxes for hard-pressed New Yorkers," said Richard Iannuzzi, president of the 600,000-member New York State United Teachers union.
In the past two weeks, the union has spent $350,000 in a television and radio advertising campaign against the tax cap.
"A tax cap would harm education programs, widen the achievement gap and reduce local control over schools," Iannuzzi said in a statement. "For those state leaders who are really serious about providing tax relief, there are other, better options."
The Working Families Party and Alliance for Quality Education echoed Iannuzzi's sentiments.
"Governor Paterson's tax cap will hurt school kids all around New York state," said Billy Easton, Alliance for Quality Education executive director.
Their advertisement - titled "Wrong Answer" - urges New Yorkers to call Paterson and tell him that "hurting schools is the wrong answer." The cost of the ad campaign is about $1.5 million.
The ad will air starting today in Albany, Buffalo, Long Island, New York City, Rochester and Syracuse, and run through Aug. 19.
Paterson has called the full state Legislature into an Aug. 19 special session to address the state's ballooning financial problems.
Teachers union withholds support for legislators who back tax cap Wednesday, August 13, 2008 The Associated Press
ALBANY — New York’s powerful teachers union is withholding its endorsement from lawmakers who vote for Gov. David Paterson’s tax cap proposal. Losing the endorsement, votes and campaign support from local teachers — and campaign funding from New York State United Teachers — could be a big blow to incumbents. Veteran Senate Republicans facing stiffer Democratic opposition this year and the possible loss of their majority would be particularly vulnerable. The Senate’s GOP majority last week supported the Democratic governor’s proposal to cap growth of the nation’s highest property tax at 4 percent annually, unless local voters overwhelmingly agree to higher spending. The Assembly could face a vote in Tuesday’s special session.
Sooner or later the legislatures had better start listening to the residents of this state and stop listening to the teachers union because there are a lot more of we the people out there than there are teachers and the politicians will be voted out of office anyway. We can't afford to keep paying high taxes so that the teachers union can keep taking money from the school districts every year to fund their excessive wages and benefits for the teachers. There has to be a limit on what we should have to pay.
Doesn't this sound like 'legal blackmail'? Intimidation? Strong arming? Legal mafiosa? Who the heck do these unions think they are? Our legislatures better grow some 'you know what's' and stand up to these unions. Cause ya know what? If these teacher's unions continue this behavior, we will vote down every future proposed budget. AND THAT IS HOW 'WE THE PEOPLE' CAN STRONG ARM THEM!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
Maybe the teachers should start squeezing their unions for the blood $$........here's the thing in this state,,,,I cant afford you and you cant afford me..... and then there's the government and 'all it has to offer'.......WHAT ARE WE DOING FOLKS.....we let other people do our talkin' and walkin'....unions are good for the moment, but, then they get stale.....time for rebirth........
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
A union divide under Paterson Pursuit of tax cap upends traditional political alliances and rivalries
By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau First published: Friday, August 15, 2008
ALBANY -- Soon after former Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office in 2007, he found himself at war with Senate Republicans over his efforts to institute campaign finance reform and to bring the Senate under Democratic control.
Neither goal was achieved.
Now, Gov. David Paterson, not six months after taking over from Spitzer, is facing his own foe -- organized labor. Moreover, Paterson is allied with Republicans on one of his signature issues: efforts to pass a school property tax cap.
The situation has given new meaning to the adage that politics makes strange bedfellows, and it highlights how some of the state Capitol's traditional alliances are splintering under the pressure of budget deficits and the desire to overhaul New York's soaring property taxes.
Paterson's proposal to mandate a 4 percent annual cap on school property tax increases passed in the Republican-controlled Senate earlier this month. It has yet to be taken up in the Assembly, where Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, opposes the cap, at least as currently proposed.
But with the possibility that Assembly Republicans may try to force at least some kind of vote on the politically popular cap when lawmakers come back into session next Tuesday, the state's education lobby, led by the New York State United Teachers, has been mounting a battle against the governor's idea.
That came to a head on Wednesday when NYSUT announced it was withholding endorsements for the 38 mostly Republican senators who sided with Paterson and voted for the cap.
NYSUT President Richard Iannuzzi stressed that they weren't trying to attack Paterson personally, but the fact remains that tax caps have been one of the governor's signature issues.
The non-endorsements, which were met largely with silence by lawmakers, follow the launch this week of advertising and direct-mail campaigns against a cap by the Alliance for Quality Education, which has close ties to teachers unions and the pro-labor Working Families Party.
"Tell Albany to vote no on Governor Paterson's tax cap scheme," reads part of the WFP mailer going to 200,000 homes in Assembly districts where the cap appears to be popular and where lawmakers may feel pressure to push for a vote next week.
Ads like this prompted Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, Paterson's point man on the tax cap effort, to charge that opponents were leveling personal attacks on the governor.
"The focus of their attack is really, in a personal way I believe, against Governor Paterson," said Suozzi.
While Paterson and Republican lawmakers are on the same side of the tax cap battle, the governor is squaring off against both Democratic and Republican legislators -- as well as unions -- when it comes to his call for $600 million worth of budget cuts during next Tuesday's session.
Lawmakers in both parties are loathe to cut programs three months before the November elections and public employee unions are already upset over a state hiring freeze the governor is implementing.
"The governor is relying on failed policies from the past," said Danny Donohue, president of the Civil Service Employees Association.
Governors and lawmakers, as well as unions, in New York have long feuded over spending and other issues.
One observer noted that Paterson, who was considered a liberal Democratic senator before ascending to lieutenant governor and then the governor's office, may be purposefully carving out a new identity as a leader who can stand up against spendthrift lawmakers.
"He's apparently decided, at least for now, that he's going to be the boss," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, which found the governor's approval rating rising from 56 percent to 64 percent after he sounded the budget alarm.
Rick Karlin can be reached at 454-5758 or by e-mail at rkarlin@timesunion.com.
NEW YORK STATE Paterson’s tax cap proposal criticized BY SARA FOSS Gazette Reporter
Some say it’s a gimmick. Others say it’s a solution. But most agree that Gov. David Paterson’s proposed property tax cap would do little to mitigate the state’s looming fiscal crisis. “It’s just a gimmick,” said Frank Mauro, executive director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, based in Latham. “It doesn’t make costs any less.” “The only relationship between a property tax cap and the state budget problem is that if the cap is in effect, the state is going to have to be more mindful of not spending all of its money at once, based on promises of school aid it cannot keep,” said E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy. McMahon said a property tax cap would not have an effect on the state’s current budget problems but it would help prevent future problems by forcing legislators to spend more wisely. “It won’t do anything in the present,” he said. Progressive groups and teacher’s unions argue that a property tax cap would hurt the state’s schools, while conservatives say it will be a useful tool for reining in state spending. Earlier this month Paterson announced that the state’s projected deficit for next year had risen from $5 billion to $6.4 billion, the result of falling revenues and rising government expenses, and that this year’s budget is running a $630 million deficit. He has asked the Legislature to approve $600 million in cuts to state programs, imposed a hiring freeze and called for a property tax cap, which would limit the growth of local school taxes to 4 percent a year, or 20 percent above inflation, unless local voters decide otherwise. Mauro said that property tax caps create a need for more state school aid; when state aid grows adequately, he said, property tax growth tends to be low, but when state aid growth weakens, property taxes tend to rise significantly. “If you have a cap, you’re going to need more state aid,” he said. “When you have very large increases in state aid, you have low increases in local contributions. A property tax cap doesn’t make the cost of delivering services any less. It just diminishes the resources available.” But the Empire Center believes the state needs a property tax cap. TAX BURDEN “New Yorkers pay some of the highest real property taxes in the country,” the group said in a statement. “And the burden just keeps growing.” The paper points out that the state’s School Tax Relief (STAR) program has provided little relief to property owners since becoming fully effective in 2001-02 because school property tax levies outside New York City have increased by an average of 6 percent a year. The STAR program has failed, the Empire Center says, because lawmakers erased a provision that would have tied the exemption to an annual limit on increases in school property tax levies; as a result, school districts were able to raise their spending and taxes even faster during the years when STAR savings were being phased in on tax bills. “It was a form of fiscal novocaine,” Mc-Mahon said of STAR. “Like all painkillers, it wore off over time. Once the painkiller wore off, everyone was complaining again.” “A property tax cap is a good thing because it gets to the heart of the issue financially,” McMahon said. “It puts a moderate limit on the overall growth of the tax levy.” New York’s property tax cap would be modeled on a similar property tax cap, enacted in Massachusetts in 1980, that capped property tax revenue growth at no more than 2.5 percent a year and 2.5 percent of a community’s assessed property value. In a recent policy paper, the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities outlines why a property tax cap wouldn’t work in New York. MASSACHUSETTS MODEL It notes that the Massachusetts cap is a cap on all municipal spending, while the cap proposed for New York would only apply to school property taxes. In Massachusetts, an infusion of state aid, and cuts to non-school funding, have buffered schools from the effect of the tax cap, the paper says. “Since 1985, per-pupil spending in Massachusetts has grown faster than per- pupil spending in New York,” the paper notes. “That did not occur because of [the tax cap]; it occurred in spite of it.” In Massachusetts, middle-class districts have suffered more as a result of the tax cap than poor or wealthy districts because wealthy districts are more likely to enact overrides and poor districts receive more state aid, Mauro said. Massachusetts, he said, also has fewer challenges than New York. “They have a more homogenous population than we do,” he said. “They have less children in poverty, but they target their aid better.” In Massachusetts, he said, high poverty districts spend more per pupil than high poverty districts in New York. But approximately 44 percent of the students in New York are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, an indication of a district’s poverty level; in Massachusetts, 28 percent are eligible. NEW YORK FACTS The New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief released a fact sheet arguing that a property tax cap will not hurt educational quality. It notes that according to the United States Department of Education, in 2007, Massachusetts ranked first in the country in fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading, eighth-grade math and eighth-grade reading, while New York ranged between 17th and 34th on the same tests. Mauro said these disparities are largely because of New York’s larger population of poor children and the fact that the state doesn’t target aid to poor districts as well as Massachusetts. The Alliance for Quality Education has teamed with the Working Families Party to run a $1.5 million television ad campaign against the property tax cap proposal. The groups support the Assembly’s “circuit breaker” proposal, which would give elderly and middle-class homeowners a break by basing their school tax more on income than house value. “We need to learn from the experience of Massachusetts and not repeat a mistake that could devastate public education in New York state,” said Billy Easton, executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education, in a statement. The Citizens Budget Commission has come out in support of a property tax cap, saying it would “provide needed discipline in the budget-making process at both the local and state level, where decisions about mandates and school aid adequacy must be made more rationally.” The group also supports a circuit breaker and additional mandated relief that would enable school districts to better control costs and streamline operations. “The state must also maintain its multi-year commitment to better target school aid based on need and ability to pay,” the group said. “High need school districts have some of the highest effective tax rates in the state. Directing large aid increases to these districts to help them reach more adequate per pupil spending levels while living under a cap is an integral part of the solution to the local tax problem.” A property tax cap bill passed the State Senate earlier this month. GALLOPING DEFICITS Paterson has said the state is at a historic fiscal crossroads, worse than the 1970s recession, and has projected that there will be $26.2 billion in budget deficits over the next three years. Legislators will return to Albany on Tuesday for an emergency economic session. The governor’s spending plan, released last week, calls for cuts to Medicaid, local government, hospitals, nursing homes and other programs and services; he has proposed cutting spending by a total of $1.23 billion in the current budget and $1.6 billion in 2009-10. Many groups have vowed to fight the proposed cuts, saying they will make it harder for the state to provide essential services. As for why Paterson would include a property tax cap in his spending plan if it will have little effect on the deficit, McMahon, who supports the measure, described it as “a P.R. strategy that sounds sympathetic to taxpayers.” A recent Siena Research Institute poll found that nearly three-quarters of voters support Paterson’s proposal to cap property tax increases. Paterson says that if his savings plan is enacted, it will cut the 2009-10 budget defi - cit from $6.4 billion to $3.7 billion.
State budget faces knife Lawmakers scramble to meet governor's request for $600M spending cut
By RICK KARLIN, Capitol bureau First published: Tuesday, August 19, 2008
ALBANY -- Earlier this month, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a school property tax cap bill at the behest of Gov. David Paterson. That bill would limit school tax growth to 4 percent each year.
Today, the Democratic Assembly will likely pass its response to that politically popular cap in the form of a "circuit breaker" that would provide income tax credits tied to property tax rates. To help pay for that mechanism, the Assembly would raise income taxes on those who earn more than $1 million a year and again for those earning more than $5 million.
The two measures represent vastly different approaches to dealing with the state's soaring property tax burden and illustrate how far apart the Senate and Assembly may be on that issue.
They may be closer, though, on the question of how to cut the state budget during the special session that starts today and could last through Wednesday.
As of late Monday, staffers for Paterson and lawmakers were sifting through budget sheets in an effort to comply with the governor's call for a $600 million cut, in order to deal with what the governor believes could be a $6.4 billion deficit next year thanks to a slumping economy.
The cuts could affect hundreds of programs ranging from food banks to free health clinics and efforts to boost police patrols in troubled areas.
While the situation remained in flux, a couple of broad possibilities were emerging, including "sweeps" of unspent funds that various agencies and programs still have in their accounts.
Additionally, lawmakers were being asked to cut 50 percent from new initiatives, or from programs that were slated to grow this year.
Paterson has stressed that the cuts are largely reductions in spending growth, but lawmakers -- all of whom are up for reelection in November -- are loathe to bring bad news home to their districts before Election Day.
The push back against a tax cap, spearheaded by the politically powerful New York State United Teachers union, continued Monday as Assembly members reported getting phone calls from union members as well as members of local PTAs.
"I'm hearing both extremes," Assemblyman Jack McEneny, D-Albany, said of the calls.
News that the Assembly planned a circuit breaker as an alternative to a cap was hailed by groups like the labor-backed Working Families Party.
"The Assembly is showing what it means to govern in a practical, progressive and responsible way," said WFP Executive Director Dan Cantor, who added that a millionaires' tax would mean that a person making $20,000 a week would have to pay an additional $200 a week in taxes.
But Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, who heads the state's Commission on Property Tax Relief -- which first called for a cap -- disagreed, noting that a circuit breaker wouldn't necessarily restrain school spending.
"It's irresponsible to do a circuit breaker without a property tax cap in place, because the people who don't get the benefit of the circuit breaker and businesses will continue to see skyrocketing growth in property taxes," he said. "When you simply subsidize property taxes, they get higher," added Edmund McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy. The Capitol is normally sleepy at this time of year, but there were unmistakable signs of life on Monday as tobacco lobbyists, advocates for the disabled and officials from the state school superintendents council paid visits to various staffers.
There was plenty of worry from smaller organizations: The Schenectady Free Health Clinic, for example, was in headlines last year when Assembly Republican Minority Leader Jim Tedisco charged that former Gov. Eliot Spitzer had cut the clinic's funding as part of a political feud. Some of the funding was restored: $125,000 rather than the $350,000 originally budgeted, said the clinic's executive director, William Spolyar.
But now the clinic is in line to get $175,000 rather than the $350,000 that was once again budgeted this year.
"If that's really what it is, then this clinic would probably cease to exist," Spolyar said.
"There are only so many raffles or pot-luck dinners you can have," added John Evers, Executive Director at the state Food Bank Association. Karlin can be reached at 454-5758 or by e-mail at rkarlin@timesunion.com. Gannett News Service contributed to this story.
Poll results A new Siena Research Institute poll asked New York voters how the governor and the Legislature should deal with the budget gap: Cut spending 80 percent Raise taxes 10 percent Both 6 percent Neither
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