Archive: Opinions

Dear Constituent:

Thank you for contacting me about the state budget and Education Aid.  Enclosed is my earlier budget letter on Education to the Speaker in which I called for serious reduction or elimination of the GEA, as well as calling for the implementation of the CFE court ruling with a fully-funding school aid formula that will adequately fund ALL our schools. 

As you may know, the Assembly one-house added $400 million over the Governor’s proposal  (too little, of course, I well understand), with essentially a 50/50 split (more for GEA than Foundation Aid  overall, in fact).  You may be aware that the poorest schools in our state benefit more from an increase in Foundation Aid, which the state is, at least, $2-3 billion behind in funding since the promise of 2007 to put $7 billion more in a new Foundation Aid formula, so the Assembly one-house added new Foundation Aid which was completely absent from the Governor’s proposal.  There are strong and legitimate competing interests for the inadequate sum of money that is being put on the table for Education, and the Assembly Majority tried to balance those interests.

The real problem, as I have said many times over many years, is that there is too little revenue with which to work, and that leaves us all fighting over crumbs.  While some have said we have a surplus this year, we actually start the budget process with a $1.7 billion budget gap.  All parts of state government, including the largest expenditure areas of Health Care and Education, have been cut numerous times since the Recession of 2007, to the tune of billions and billions of dollars.  We can’t go find substantial funds in another part of the budget -- all areas have now taken multiple and serious hits.

In order to fund Education as we should, we need to be talking about progressive income taxes -- or activating the stock transfer tax -- and raising the $4-5 billion that would fully fund ALL our schools.   It is the only way this problem is going to get solved.  But as of today, there is no organized effort to mobilize New Yorkers around such a proposal, so I fear we will be stuck with the status quo for another year.  I hope the week ahead proves me wrong, but it will take a big push from a lot of New Yorkers to get us closer to where we should be on funding.  I hope you are contacting all parties -- me, as well as your Senator and the Governor, to express your unhappiness with the current money on the table for Education.  I assure you, I will keep fighting hard from my inside seat.

Without money added to the state treasury, I think the final number for Education is going to continue to be disappointing, perhaps a $300 million add to the Governor’s proposal of $680 million.  New York is a very wealthy state, with 66 billionaires the last time I checked and about 44,000 millionaires.  A 1% income tax rate increase on those making $5 million or more and a 2% increase on those making $10 million or more would raise about $5 billion – and allow us to keep our promises to our schools and the precious children our educators work so hard to teach. We’re asking our top income-earners, those whose personal income tax rate was cut by 50% in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, to pay just a little more. That would restore some of the tax fairness we enjoyed from the 1950’s to the 70's, when the middle class was strong and our economy was doing well.  A few unrepresentative anecdotes aside, studies that track the experience in New York State when we have raised taxes a bit on the very wealthy show that they do not leave New York; in fact, we actually see more high-end tax returns coming in to Tax and Finance.  Most wealthy people are very happy living in New York – they generally do not move out of state.  The people who are leaving are the middle class who are overburdened with property taxes; relying more on the progressive income tax would be a fairer way to fund our schools and help to ease the local property tax burden. 

Again, many thanks for writing.  Let us continue to fight ‘til the 11th hour.  Our children deserve that from us – and more. 

Sincerely,
Barbara Lifton
Member of Assembly
125th District