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Public schools spared mid-year state cuts; property tax cap averted
Sep 12, 2008 12:18 PM
When Gov. David Paterson made his summer doomsday announcement that the growing state deficit required midyear cuts in a state budget inked just three months earlier, it seemed that education spending was about to be hit. Unlike other state services cut for the fiscal year beginning April 1, Albany had kept its promises to fully fund public schools, and many now feared it was education’s turn to be chopped. Historically, such midyear cuts have been particularly disruptive.
The threat of midyear education cuts came as the push, supported by the governor, to cap increases to the property tax, the main funding sources for schools outside New York City, was also coming to a head in Albany.
Advocates for public education immediately swung into high gear to protect schools.
“Thanks go to the Alliance for Quality Education and the Working Families Party, which, with us, were crucial players in stopping a train wreck on property tax caps and the budget,” said AFT/UFT President Randi Weingarten. “The public schools were left unscathed. Even in these troubled times, the state Legislature knew to immunize kids.”
In addition to the full-court press to lawmakers, the pro-labor Working Families Party and the education advocacy group Alliance for Quality Education spent some $1.5 million broadcasting commercials that slammed the proposed 4-percent property-tax increase cap as harmful to schools and kids and particularly bad for lower-income school districts across the state. They pointed to California and Massachusetts, where tax caps have led to significant cutbacks in local school spending.
New York State United Teachers, the UFT’s statewide affiliate, and the UFT weighed in as well. The UFT expressed concern that a tax cap would force the state Legislature to shift aid from New York City and other large cities to beleaguered suburban and rural school districts.
The best way to control property taxes, Weingarten argued, would be with a “circuit breaker,” which actually lowers taxes for those who are paying too big a portion of their income in property taxes.
In addition to a circuit breaker that would give tax relief to middle-income home owners, the UFT supported a millionaires’ tax, which would impose a surcharge on annual incomes above $1 million.
Paterson called the Legislature back into session on Aug. 19 to deal with what he termed a looming fiscal crisis requiring drastic action: a $6.4 billion deficit for the present fiscal year and a projected $26.2 billion shortfall over the next three years.
The outcome: $400 million was cut from this year’s overall budget and $600 million from next year’s. And with the exception of higher education, which took a $50.6 million cut, education was spared. In addition, no state workers were laid off, something the governor indicated could happen.
The Legislature did not pass a property tax cap either. While the Republican-dominated state Senate voted for a cap, the Democratic-controlled Assembly did not. Instead, the Assembly passed a circuit breaker and a modest increase in the personal income tax on people who make more than $1 million a year. A millionaire’s tax increase, which would net the state some $2.6 billion, would more than offset the $1.6 billion cost of the circuit breaker, Assembly lawmakers noted.
