Wondering why this state’s taxes are the nation’s highest? Just look at how lawmakers this week pandered to mayors seeking to ease the cap on property-tax hikes.
Lawmakers including Republican Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan.
The mayors say the cap — which is tied to inflation (less than 1 percent this year) — doesn’t leave them enough to keep up with rising costs.
What they don’t say is what’s driving those costs: too-generous public-employee wage hikes the mayors themselves agreed to, fat in their own budgets — and, perhaps most of all, Albany-imposed laws that cost local governments a fortune.
Democratic Assembly Majority Leader Joe Morelle says his members are “very much open” to easing the cap. The ceiling (2 percent a year or inflation, whichever is lower) “makes it very difficult if you have labor contracts,” he adds. Spiking costs, he notes, are “beyond [mayors’] control.”
OK: Calls to ease the tax cap are to be expected . . . from Democrats. But Flanagan said some Republicans back them.
In the past, the GOP-run Senate has pushed to make the cap permanent. But now Flanagan says he’d be “surprised if there were any changes to the tax cap this year” — because Republicans are suddenly split on the issue.
Huh? Why would any GOPers back larger property-tax hikes? New York ranks fifth highest in the nation on such levies; are Republicans gunning to be No. 1?
Flanagan & Co. should be demanding tax cuts, or at least freezes — not debating whether the hikes are large enough.
To help the mayors, lawmakers could call for relief on pensions, Medicaid and laws that let public-sector unions squeeze higher pay from towns and cities.
Republicans’ openness to Democrats’ high-tax, economy-ruining agenda is fast becoming a pattern: Flanagan has also hinted he might OK a $15 minimum wage.
Are these donkeys in elephants’ clothing?