Step two out of three for property tax relief

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s recent proposal for a “circuit breaker” tax credit program for people who pay more than 6 percent of their income in property taxes is the second of three essential steps for real property tax relief.

Step one, the property tax cap, was the important blunt instrument that helped stopped the bleeding. Step two, the circuit breaker, would give relief to those who are burdened by unaffordably high and regressive property taxes. Step three, mandate relief, is the most important and hardest to achieve, but would bring the most affordability and reform to our inefficient, overly expensive government in New York state and here on Long Island. It would involve changing state laws to allow school districts more freedom to do their jobs without the state requiring as much reporting, or dictating everything from class size to the number of aides. Let’s support the governor and legislators who continue to push the property tax relief agenda.

I started campaigning for a property tax cap in 2005, and made it part of my 2006 campaign for governor against Eliot Spitzer. (Don’t remind me.) Spitzer was opposed to the property tax cap, but to his credit, he appointed me chairman of the New York State Commission on Property Tax Relief, and he eventually reversed himself and supported the cap.

He described it as a “blunt instrument” that would force school districts to stop relying on overly burdensome, unfair property taxes that hurt low- and middle-income homeowners, seniors on fixed incomes, new home buyers and small businesses. Later, Gov. David Paterson supported the cap as well, and Cuomo, with the support of the Senate and Assembly, got it done.

My 2008 report on property tax relief in New York state recommended, in addition to the property tax cap, a circuit breaker and, most important, mandate relief. There really are only three choices regarding our expensive New York state governments. Either keep raising property taxes (which is unacceptable; hence the property tax cap), or get more state aid to reduce the local burden (or state funding for a circuit breaker to reduce the individual burden), or stop spending so much, which would really require mandate reform.

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