Archive: Opinions

I was shocked Wednesday when I heard the Lansing Town Board is part of a county-wide cooperative effort to document shared services in order to qualify property taxpayers for a state rebate on Town and County taxes.  In October of last year the board had concluded that the cost of fulfilling state requirements to get property owners a pitiful check from New York State ultimately cost taxpayers more than they would get back.  Not cooperating was a tangible protest to Albany that ultimately wouldn't cost Lansing taxpayers anything.

My problem with Governor Andrew Cuomo is that he keeps coming up with mandates and programs that, on the surface, look great for taxpayers and make him look like a hero, but, when you get down to the nitty gritty, actually hurt New York citizens.  The whole tax cap rebate is a prime example of that.  It's a Rebate And Switch scheme.

Most of the town and municipal governments in New York are small, which means they have limited resources to meet increasing demands from Albany.  At the same time Cuomo instituted the tax cap, New York was denying schools a significant percentage of state aid they qualified for.  Attempts to end this Gap Elimination Adjustment (GEA) have been unsuccessful for years, even this year when increased lobbying by school districts seemed to be changing minds in the State Assembly and Senate.  But when they actually voted they approved the budget, which has increasingly onerous demands on districts.

So with one hand Albany is saying you have to spend significantly more to document efficiencies (and the dollar amounts being spent on this paper pushing are significant amounts that, in our school districts, take resources away from our children), they are, with the other hand, stunting taxing authority's ability to raise more money with the tax cap.

At a joint Lansing Town and School Board meeting in mid-October, 2014, the Town Board decided that the verification process required of New York State in order to qualify taxpayers for property tax rebates, including detailed documentation proving that shared services save 1% of the budget, would be too time and resources-consuming.  They concluded that what amounted to an unfunded mandate would cost more to taxpayers than the value of the checks they would receive.

In addition to the local cost of complying with the tax cap and other conditions, the cost in State tax money for this plus a program that earlier this year yielded $350 checks to over a million residents who have children is reportedly $750 million this fiscal year.  Postage alone for the approximately 4 million checks was estimated to cost the state $1.6 million.  And when the checks for the school tax rebate finally did come, they were pretty small.  Mine was enough for a fancy dinner for two if we didn't splurge on a really good wine.

Lansing officials are now cooperating with a county-wide effort to produce the documentation necessary to qualify town and county taxpayers for this year's rebate.  Think about it.  Our school tax is the biggest tax burden, and rebate checks averaged not much more than $100.  A town tax rebate would be more along the lines of $15, with the county somewhere in between.

As Lansing Supervisor Kathy Miller said Wednesday, who pays for the rebates?  We do.  It's taking a significant amount of money from the income tax pocket to put an insignificant amount of dollars into the property tax pocket.

And we don't even save on taxes -- it just defers payment for a year.  Six months, really, since we paid the money in August and didn't get it back until February.

Think about it.  Let's say the difference between your school tax two years ago and last year was $100.  You got $100 earlier this year.  Then the difference between last school year and next is $110.  You don't get $210 this time around. You get $110.  So you are paying last year's $100 this year.

	Correction from Tompkins County Director of Assessment:  If that is the case and the school showed the 1% efficiency, then you will get $210 this time.  But then in the next year, you will have to pay that extra $210+say $100=$310 without getting the check back in the fall.

If the state would simply meet its obligations and stop interfering in home rule it would cost taxpayers much less and allow schools and municipalities to focus on the important things they are supposed to be doing.  I understand why the Lansing board wants to cooperate with its neighbors who evidently care more about the stupid checks.  But that's our money being spent to cooperate with a mandate that hurts us more than it helps.

Why don't our elected officials in the Assembly and Senate stand up to Cuomo and other officials in Albany who think this bait and switch approach that makes them look good to the people who don't pay attention?  This new budget should never have been approved with what amounts to an attack on New York teachers in it.  And schools and municipalities, including our own, should refuse to go along with the ridiculous demands that support Albany's false benevolence to taxpayers.

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