ALBANY — A state commission urged the governor on Monday to cap local property tax increases at 4 percent a year as part of a preliminary proposal aimed at reducing New York’s local tax burden, among the highest in the nation.

But with the proposal facing stiff resistance from the state teachers’ unions and only weeks remaining in the legislative session, it appeared unlikely that lawmakers would take up the issue this year.

The commission, headed by Thomas R. Suozzi, the Nassau County executive, was established by Gov. Eliot Spitzer and will not issue final recommendations until December.

“Once you cap the property tax, recognizing that we can no longer keep raising property taxes, you’ve got to either increase state aid the way you have been, if you can, or you cut expenses, or you do some combination of both,” Mr. Suozzi said. “And that’s what the tax cap does — it forces hard choices.”

Gov. David A. Paterson declined to comment on the proposal, but Errol Cockfield, a spokesman, said that reducing local property taxes remained a top priority for the governor.

Under the commission’s preliminary proposal, counties, towns and school districts would be allowed to raise property taxes by 120 percent of the consumer price index or 4 percent each year, whichever is lower. Breaking the cap would require approval by at least 55 percent of the voters in a given district. And those districts that increased spending by less than the cap would be allowed to use a portion of the difference in future years.

According to the commission, local property taxes have increased an average of 7 percent a year for the last four years.

“If such a cap had been in effect for the past decade, it would have had a very significant effect,” said Edmund J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative research group.

The commission also proposed overhauling the state’s patchwork system of property tax rebates and exemptions, which has been criticized for apportioning aid around the state based on political power rather than need. The commission urged that at least $2 billion worth of the current school tax rebate aid, which totaled $4.7 billion this year, would be redirected to a new “circuit breaker” program, which would freeze property taxes when they exceed a certain percentage of an individual’s income.

The commission also included a detailed list of recommendations for reducing school district spending in the state, which on a per-pupil basis is well above the national average. Sheldon Silver, the Assembly speaker, said in a statement that Assembly Democrats shared the commission’s concern about rising property taxes and endorsed the notion of some kind of circuit breaker. But he hinted that any legislation would need to protect against cuts in school aid.

A spokesman for Joseph L. Bruno, the Senate majority leader, declined to comment on the proposal, saying that the senator’s staff had not yet fully reviewed it.

But Richard C. Iannuzzi, the president of the New York State United Teachers, which represents about 600,000 teachers and other public school employees, criticized the recommendations as “anti-teacher and anti-education.” He also said that his union would be lobbying the Legislature to ignore the proposals.

Read article here

You may also like

State’s Growing Budget Hole Threatens NYC Jobs and Aid as Congress Takes a Holiday

“The biggest problem for the state is the enormous, recurring structural budget gap starting next year and into the future,” said E.J. McMahon of the conservative-leaning Empire Center. “Cuomo clearly hopes that starting in 2021, (Democratic presidential candidate Joseph) Biden and a Democratic Congress will provide states and local government a couple of year’s worth of added stimulus. Read More

How Andrew Cuomo became ‘maybe the most powerful governor’ in U.S.

Ed McKinley ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process,  noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar." M Read More

Study disputes Cuomo on Trump tax package; experts say it’s complicated

Michael Gormley ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost New Yo Read More

Empire Center sues Department of Health over nursing home records

Johan Sheridan ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a  against the state Department of Health on Friday. “This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s Read More

Good news: That New York pork isn’t going out the door after all

The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More

New York Lawmakers Seek Independent Probe of Nursing-Home Coronavirus Deaths

With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More

Policy analyst: Cuomo wrong to write-off nursing home criticism as political conspiracy

“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More

EDITORIAL: Nursing home report requires a second opinion

No doubt, the Health Department and the governor would like this report to be the final word on the subject. But if it’s all the same with them, we’d still like a truly independent review. Read More