Cahill Calls for Full State Funding of Education

Calls Senate proposal deeply flawed and fiscally dangerous to local schools

January 3, 2008

Education funding reform must be our top priority. The people of the Hudson Valley and all of New York deserve real solutions to this crisis that is crippling our schools and threatening the very fabric of our communities. The time has come for the state to provide the resources necessary for an equitable, high quality education for every child. The only way to accomplish this goal is with a full state takeover of education funding and the elimination of regressive school property tax burden on homeowners, renters and businesses.

I have introduced legislation (A.4746) that will eliminate the use of regressive real estate taxes for the purposes of funding education and already nearly 20 other sponsors have agreed. This bill is based on the commitment that it is the state's responsibility to ensure that every child, everywhere in New York, has an equal right to a quality education regardless of where they live or the level of their family's income. By eliminating the school real property tax and shifting to a more progressive statewide income tax, we will be able to fund our schools equitably, fairly and more affordably for all New Yorkers.

Today, the State Senate put forward a deeply flawed measure that calls for the State to spend an additional $9 billion a year, yet does nothing to address the needs of under-performing schools. The bill would provide absolutely no benefits the millions of New Yorkers who rent their homes, to the businesses of New York State and offers little, if any, relief to residents and students of our city school districts.

During the Pataki administration, the Senate repeatedly worked to undermine real tax reform by blocking Assembly plans to significantly increase state aid to education and reduce the burden on local property taxes. Their reluctance to adequately fund our schools has pushed us to the crisis point we are facing today. Last year, the Assembly worked with Governor Spitzer to adopt changes the way we finance education while providing record increases in school aid and property tax relief directed to the districts and taxpayers who need it most.

The Senate has now signaled an abandonment of this historic commitment and if they prevail, it will be a disaster in many local school districts. Their proposal would further morph the much contorted STAR program into the state's primary education aid formula, shifting more money away from Hudson Valley and Catskill area schools and into the budgets of wealthier districts. This misguided approach will ensure wealthy school districts will continue to receive their politically-engineered bounty of state funding by robbing less well off communities of their fair share of education aid.

Unfortunately we found that even a record increase in state funding was not enough to stave off increases in property taxes for many communities. This year, I have already urged the Governor and my colleagues in the Legislature to take an even more aggressive and innovative approach to this crisis. I will continue to do so until the job is done. We have a moral obligation to increase state aid over and above steadily rising local education costs and to finally allow lower property taxes without jeopardizing the quality of our children’s' education.

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