Downstate suburban homeowners were the big winners in the property-tax rebate plan crafted in the final days of the state Legislature’s 2015 session, with some moderate-income Lower Hudson Valley homeowners expected to receive checks for nearly $2,000 by 2019, when the program is fully phased in.

The final deal was forged as the Legislature failed to institute a property-tax circuit breaker, favored by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Democrats, which would have targeted relief to homeowners earning up to $250,000 whose property taxes exceeded 6 percent of their income.

But that relief would have come as a credit on their state income tax filings, which lacks the impact of having voters receive checks from Albany in October, not long before state incumbents stand for re-election.

Nevertheless, the rebate plan will provide a sliding scale of benefits in 2017 to 2019 that provides the highest payments to homeowners earning less than $75,000 a year. The plan is valued at $3 billion over four years and, if fully funded, it will provide a boon to downstate suburban homeowners because it’s based on the state’s School Tax Relief program, or STAR

You might call it Son of STAR.

Under STAR, the state pays part of the school taxes for eligible homeowners. The payment depends on the municipality within a school disctrict, and is the same amount, no matter the assesed value of the home. The biggest STAR payments in our region go to homeowners in the Hastings-on-Hudson school district.

A Tax Watch analysis found that the biggest rebate checks in 2017 will go to homeowners in Hastings-on-Hudson, who would get between $127 to $648, depending on their income. That would rise to between $231 to $1,966 in 2019.

The smallest check in our region would go to Putnam Valley residents in the Garrison school district, who would receive between $27 and $136 in 2017 and between $49 and $413 in 2019.

Upstate, the benefits are far less. A North Elba homeowner in the Lake Placid district would get from $11 to $58 in 2017 and from $21 to $176 in 2019.

“It’s a first step,” said Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, D-Ossining, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Real Property. “We are finally starting the process of looking at people’s needs, and direct money to the people who need it.”

Approved on Thursday, the agreement came as the state Legislature failed to approve the education tax-credit program for private and parochial schools, which was a priority for Cuomo as well as Jewish and Catholic leaders, who lobbied intensely for the second year in a row.

Instead, the Legislature approved payment of $250 million over two years to make good on aid the state owed schools for textbooks and transportation. It makes good on Albany’s debt, but does not institute an on-going stream of income for the private school sector.

The STAR rebate program, which the Legislature will begin to fund in 2016, will start slowly, with the first-year checks, to be delivered by Oct. 15 of the 2016 election year, bringing $135 for each suburban homeowner in the MTA region and $185 for each upstate homeowner who qualifies for STAR.

That same year, homeowners will also receive a check from the final year of Cuomo’s tax-freeze rebate program, instituted to provide an incentive to stay under the tax cap.

In 2017, the big bucks will begin to flow to the suburbs — as long as one’s school district stays within the state tax cap, which limited school district tax levy increases to less than 2 percent in 2015. The rebate checks will be paid as a percentage of one’s STAR savings, which differ markedly throughout the Lower Hudson Valley.

Under STAR, the state pays a portion of a homeowner’s school-tax bill, with the amount based on an formula that considers “the average price of residential property in the county divided by the statewide range, according to state Department of Taxation and Finance.

Albany lobbyists from both the right and left derided the deal. EJ McMahon, president of the right-leaning Empire Center for Public Policy, said the rebate plan was an electioneering gambit, and that the money would be better used to finance infrastructure improvements, deferred pension contributions or provide tax relief to all New Yorkers, including commercial property owners and renters, who won’t qualify for a Son of STAR check.

Ron Deutsch of the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute said the program fails to target relief to those who need it, saying the income categories are far too broad.

“A family with $75,001 in income and $150,000 will get the same rebate, even though the homeowner making less will have a much harder time to pay their property tax bill.”

© 2015 The Journal News