School Boards: Tax Cap Must Come With Mandate Relief
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- July
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The state School Boards Association put out the results of its own internal poll today that shows 75 percent of school-board members would support a tax cap if the state picked up a percentage of other costs, such as pension contributions, health insurance, transportation and energy costs.
The results fall in line with the stance of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, who yesterday that he wants assurances that schools wouldn’t be financially strapped under a cap.
On Monday, Silver said on a radio show that a circuit breaker, which would tie taxes to a percentage of a homeowner’s income, may be the better alternative to a cap.
“That would provide immediate relief,” Silver said on Fred Dicker’s radio show in Albany.
School board members also appear to favor a circuit breaker, with 50 percent of school board members preferring that option while only 19 percent supported a tax cap.
Of course, opponents of a circuit breaker point out that the program would do nothing to curb spending and only shift costs more on the state.
“School board members are caught in a Catch-22 situation. While they want to curtail rising property taxes, their school districts face escalating costs that are largely beyond their control,” said NYSSBA Executive Director Timothy Kremer.
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on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 12:53 pm by Joseph Spector.
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Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
