If you agree with Assemblyman Kevin Cahill's Equity in Education Act (A.8069) proposal for a statewide income tax solution to eliminate school property taxes (that still retains much local control), please sign this petition-- and pass it along to all you know-- the fact is that Joel Miller's proposal calls for unfeasible and impractical school-district-by-school-district income taxes as opposed to Cahill's needed statewide tax fairness solution

Note-- Cahill's bill is, in essence, the same legislation that Rep. Maurice Hinchey tried to get passed through our state legislature for many years as an Assemblyman (to his credit); currently Cahill's bill (A.8069) is co-sponsored by Assemblymembers Rivera, Peoples, Zebrowski, Weisenberg, Reilly, Eddington, Alessi, Benjamin, Boyland, Brennan, Destito, John, Latimer, Lavine, Robinson, Schroeder, and Seminerio.

Joel Tyner
County Legislator (Clinton/Rhinebeck)
Democratic Candidate for Assembly, 102nd A.D.
324 Browns Pond Road
Staatsburg, NY 12580
joeltyner@earthlink.net
(845) 876-2488

[past similar efforts:
PetitionOnline.com/BCBudget/petition.html;
PetitionOnline.com/fairtax/petition.html;
PetitionOnline.com/Fairness/petition.html]

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"Highland resident Robin Vaccai-Yess, organizer of the New York Property Tax Reform Coalition [NYPropertyTaxReform.org], is advocating for legislation, including the Equity in Education Act, sponsored by Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston.

She has collected 300 signatures from 14 counties so far in her online petition and hopes to see a statewide grassroots effort in tax reform.

'This is an election year. This is the time to make noise,' said Vaccai-Yess, who works as a certified financial planner."

[from "Reform Unites Residents: Groups Are Formed to Press for Change in Taxation System" by Erikah Haavie-- Poughkeepsie Journal July 30th:
poughkeepsiejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060730/NEWS01/607300347]

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See nypropertytaxreform.org/assets/Petition_Print.pdf for Vaccai-Yess petition. Thanks also to Vicky Perry and her Tax Reform Effort of Northern Dutchess (TREND: TrendNY.org) for helping to get the word out on all the different school tax reform bills out there. Finally, thanks as well to fellow state legislature candidates Brian Keeler, Mike Kaplowitz, Virginia Martin, Eleanor Thompson, and Ken Harper for also working hard to get the truth out on how badly skewed our state's tax system has gotten.

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Specific info on A.8069 from the Assembly bill memo for A.8069 itself...
[from Assembly.state.ny.us/leg/?bn=A8069]

Makes provisions for the state to assume all costs of basic quality education and for the elimination of real property taxes for the support of education; requires board of regents to establish a schedule of mandatory basic services and costs thereof; school districts shall submit an annual basic budget to the Department of Education for basic services; increases taxes on personal income and business; makes special provisions for reduction of tax in certain cities and for reduction in rent by tenants in such cities; provides for phased in
methods of funding using a "Basic Quality Education" formula; repeals certain provisions of the tax law and real property tax relating thereto.

TITLE OF BILL: An act to amend the education law, the real property
tax law and the tax law, in relation to abolishing certain school
taxes, providing for alternative taxes and state distribution to
school districts; and repealing certain provisions of the real
property tax law and the tax law relating to certain taxes

PURPOSE: The purpose of this plan is to permit the financing of
public schools in New York State within the context of the following
objectives:

1) the elimination of the inequitable and regressive real estate tax
as the support of public schools;

2) the retention of present levels of local control by school
districts; and

3) the guarantee of quality and equality of educational opportunity
for all children of the state.

SUMMARY OF SPECIFIC PROVISIONS: The plan consists of the following basic principles:

1) The state shall assume all the costs of Basic Quality Education
(BQE), including all general and special education services which the
commissioner, under guidelines established by the legislature, shall
define as necessary. Basic quality education as defined by the
commissioner, shall allow sufficient latitude so that choices may be
made by local districts with respect to their individual needs.
"BASIC" shall be defined in terms of equal services to all pupils
regardless of differences in cost in different districts for those
services.

2) The "BASIC" costs shall be borne by increases in statewide business and individual income taxes in conjunction with the elimination of school district real estate taxes. New York City, which does not identify the school portion of its real estate taxes, and also
collects an income tax, shall apply the full amount of the school
portion of its budget toward a reduction in the real estate tax. The
same formula shall apply to the cities of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse
and Yonkers. Property tax reductions would be passed through to
tenants on a pro-rate basis where lease permits. Where this is
precluded by a lease, tenants will be entitled to tax credits or
rebates on their state income taxes for the duration of the lease.

3) BASIC budgets shall be submitted by local boards of education to
the State Education Department for approval.

4) All monies for BASIC budgets shall be collected by the state through the business and personal income tax. The "BASIC Education Tax" shall be levied as a percentage of the business or individual income tax.

5) Transition period: During the first (seven) years after enactment, a district may opt to receive as its BASIC BUDGET one of following: a)
budget amount of the school year during which this law shall take effect (dollar save harmless); b) the district budget of the school year during which this law shall take effect increased or decreased by changes in enrollment (pupil save harmless); or c) the amount resulting from the application of the BQE formula, but not to exceed the average statewide increase over the prior year, plus 10\% growth ceiling. After five years only option (c) will apply.

JUSTIFICATION: This plan will end the financial dependency of public schools on the regressive and unfair real property tax; a tax which bears little relationship to one's ability to pay; a tax which penalizes the elderly, the retired, the unemployed, the widowed and the person who chooses to invest in his/her own home.

This plan will ensure equitable education for all children of the state regardless of wealth within a school district because the BASIC budget will provide for whatever general services are necessary to ensure a quality education, and all special services required by needy districts.

Present levels of local control will be retained because BASIC budget
will be prepared by local school boards, with state approval required
only for the BASIC budget.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS: No cost to the state. Transfer of taxes.

EFFECTIVE DATE: This act shall take effect on the first of January next succeeding the date on which it shall have become a law, provided, however, that sections two, five, seven, eight and ten through thirty-one of this act shall take effect on the first of January in the 5th year next succeeding such date.

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The May 14th Daily Freeman editorial "Shifting the Burden" hit the nail on the head on this [excerpted here below]:

"It's clear that the antiquated property tax no longer is able to support the education establishment.

Moving to a state income tax-based education funding system has been resisted as an economy depressant. It is by no means a new idea. But it does have some new wrinkles that might make it more palatable.

The income tax, pegged at just below 7 percent, is a flat tax. Taxpayers pay 6.875 percent regardless of your income, whether it's $40,000 a year or $400,000. A post 9/11 surtax of 2 percent on income over $200,000 sunset last year. A flat tax is by definition regressive, like the sales tax, in that it does not take into account, as does the federal income tax, an individual's ability to pay.

Raising the income tax, even above the 9 percent it was when Gov. George Pataki took office in 1995, may be necessary, along with establishing progressivity within the tax in order to raise the revenues to relieve the property tax.

Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, a leading proponent in the Legislature of shifting the burden of school taxes from property tax to the income tax, cites studies from the well-regarded state Fiscal Policy Institute that show some $7.7 billion in additional revenues could be realized by raising the highest rates to mid-'70's levels, along with "the natural growth" of a progressive income tax.

Cahill projects that by increasing the value of exemptions, "95 percent of New Yorkers would wind up paying less income tax" under such a system.

A delegation of state Board of Cooperative Education Services superintendents is currently soliciting input on ways to improve our education system, a necessary task we're sure ranks near the top of most educators' priority lists. While they're making the rounds, we suggest the superintendents also explore better ways to pay the increasingly higher costs of education.

A progressive income tax, with its revenues dedicated to education, coupled with reasonable spending caps, should be considered."

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Fact: State income taxes have been slashed so much that millionaires now literally pay half the taxes to Albany they used to under Rockefeller in the early 70's. As a result, school property taxes have skyrocketed to make up the revenue gap across the state on a local level. As Assemblyman Kevin Cahill has pointed out a number of times at annual Dutchess County Democratic Committee Issues Forums, it's gotten so bad that middle-class and lower-income New Yorkers now pay about twice the state and local taxes as millionaires do,
[see FiscalPolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm; ITEPnet.org/wp2000/ny\%20pr.pdf]

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Fact: A Garin, Hart, Yang Research Group sampled 513 registered voters across NY in April 2003 and found that "by 73\% to 23\%, New Yorkers favor a proposal to raise the state personal income tax by seventh-tenths of one percent on incomes of more than $100,000, and by 1.4\% on incomes of more than $200,000.
[see nysaflcio.org/press_releases/2003/04_14_03_budget_poll.htm]

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Fact: New Jersey taxes incomes of $500,000 and up to cut local property taxes there. California voters approved tax increases for millionaires-- using the proceeds for mental health programs. 77\% of Connecticut voters-- including 63\% of GOP voters there-- favor a new tax on incomes over a million.
[see thenation.com/doc/20060123/alperovitz;
commondreams.org/views05/0510-27.htm ]

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Fact: The state-level trickle-down economics that Gov. Pataki and his ilk have engineered in New York over the last dozen years have hurt-- not helped-- our state's economy. According to the the Governor's own Department of Labor data, New York has been below the national average in job growth rate since 1995, ranking the state 45th in the country in annual average employment growth from 1995-2004. If the state had grown at the national average, 502,100 additional jobs would have been created during the Pataki administration.
[see FiscalPolicy.org; Assembly.State.ny.us]

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Fact: New York now has the biggest gap between the rich and the poor in the entire country, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute-- "Over the past two decades, a huge gap has opened up between rich and poor in New York State, according to a major new report. In the early 1980s families in the top 20 percent made five-and-a-half times as much as those in the bottom 20 percent. By the early 2000s, the top earners made over eight times as much. In the early 1980s, New York State ranked 11th in income inequality. The average income of the richest 20 percent of New Yorkers increased from $79,000 to $130,000 over 20 years (in 2002 dollars)-- an increase of 65\% while the average income of the bottom fifth went just from $14,000 to $16,000. The time has certainly come for New York's business and government leaders to address the implications of a growing income inequality not only for our economy, but also for our democracy." [see FiscalPolicy.org]

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"The Path Not Taken: How New York State Increased the Tax Burden on the Middle Class and Cut Taxes for its Highest Income Taxpayers by Over $8 Billion a Year"
by Frank Mauro, Executive Director of the Fiscal Policy Institute
[FiscalPolicy.org/taxhistory2.htm]

In 1972, New York State had a personal income tax with 14 brackets, ranging from a low of 2\% to a high of 15\%.

Since that time the state government has significantly restructured the state personal income tax in a variety of ways. Among the changes that have been made since 1972 has been a move to something that is much closer to a flat tax. This has been done by eliminating brackets from both the bottom and the top of the old structure.

For example, the lowest rate in the old structure was 2\%. But the 2\% and 3\% brackets have been eliminated, so the lowest rate is now 4\%.

At the other end of the spectrum, even more brackets have been eliminated. The 15\%, 14\%, 13\%, 12\%, 11\%, 10\% 9\%, 8\%, and 7\% brackets are all gone.

New York now has a 5-bracket/5-rate system, with both the 5 rates and the 5 brackets in very tight ranges.

All five of New York's current rates are between 4\% (the current lowest rate) and 6.85\% (the current highest rate).

And the brackets are just as compressed. A single person reaches the top 6.85\% rate once his or her taxable income reaches $20,000. A married couple is in the top bracket when their taxable income is $40,000 or more.

For three years (2003, 2004, and 2005), New York State has had two temporary brackets on people with higher incomes. This year, for example, the state has a temporary top rate of 7.25\% for single individuals with taxable income above $100,000. For married couples, this temporary top rate applies if their taxable income is above $150,000. The second temporary rate is 7.7\% and it applies to all taxpayers with taxable income above $500,000.

To address the impact on eliminating the bottom two brackets (the 2\% and 3\% brackets) on low income working families, the state has adopted two income-based credits - the household credit and the state earned income tax credit. Those credits help people at the low end of the income distribution, which is good; but, they do not blunt the impact on middle income families of the state's move to a relatively flat rate income tax structure.

Rather than eliminating so many rates from the top of the bracket structure, New York State could have helped middle income families much more if it had kept its old tax structure but stretched out the brackets each year to reflect the effects of inflation and indexed the state's personal exemption as well. New York State, in fact, no longer has a personal exemption for taxpayers and their spouses, and the exemption for dependants has been set at $1,000 since 1988. Over this same period, the federal government's personal exemption has been increased from $1,950 to $3,200. That means that a married couple with two children gets exemptions of $12,800 when calculating their federal income tax but only $2,000 when calculating their state income tax.

If New York State had pursued this alternative approach, lets call it Plan B - of indexing its tax brackets and its personal exemption for inflation, rather than cutting brackets from the top, 95\% of New Yorkers would be paying less in state income taxes than they pay under the current law but (and this is a very big but) the state would be collecting $7.7 billion more in tax revenue each year. And, if it had been collecting that additional income tax revenue, the state would not have had to cut and freeze state revenue sharing with local governments as it has on so many occasions; and it would have been able to increase the share of school budgets covered by state aid. What we actually got instead were cuts in revenue sharing and smaller increases in school aid than would otherwise have been possible. And this meant bigger increases than necessary in local property taxes and school taxes - again hitting middle income families very hard.

So, how can it be that New York State could have pursued a policy that would have meant lower income taxes for 95\% of taxpayers but more revenue for the state treasury? It sounds impossible but it's true, and the reason why it is true is because so much of the income growth in New York State and in the United States over the past 20 years has been concentrated at the top end of the income distribution.

Instead, since the late 1970s, New York State has pursued an income tax policy that has meant higher than necessary income taxes for middle income families and huge tax cuts for the best-off 5\% of state taxpayers - many of whom are actually residents of other states (primarily Connecticut and New Jersey) who commute into New York City to work.

Here are some examples. Because New York State cut income tax rates from the top rather than implementing Plan B, a family of 4 with income of $50,000 is paying about $1,000 more in income taxes than it would have if New York had pursued Plan B. For a family with income of $100,000 that tax difference is $2,000. The biggest losers are families earning about $150,000, who are paying about $2,500 more under the current 5-bracket, 6.85\% plan than they would be paying under Plan B with 14 brackets and a top rate of 15\%.

At the other end of the spectrum are the big winners. A family
earning $500,000 is now paying $22,000 a year less than they would be paying if Plan B had been implemented. At the $1 million level, this savings is about $63,000 and at $2 million, it is about $145,000.

Why has New York State pursued such an attack on the middle class just to provide huge benefits to those who have the least difficulty in making ends meet? Has this been a conscious effort at class warfare? or, Have our policymakers just been oblivious to the impact of the state's misguided tax policies?

A few states have taken steps to ensure that legislators no longer
have to make such decisions in the dark. They have done this by
requiring independent nonpartisan analysis of the impact of proposed tax changes on people at different income levels. New York should follow suit. But even, if this approach is successful, it will just prevent us from going further in the wrong direction.

What New York state needs to do now is to undo some of the damage of the last 25 years. It needs to move in the opposite direction to make the tax system fairer and to generate the revenue necessary to fund a statewide solution to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit and to reduce the pressure that we are now placing on the property and sales tax bases.

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Fact: All of the following organizations across the state have not officially endorsed Cahill's A.8069 proposal-- however, all of the groups listed below have did endorse this part of the Better Choice Budget for New York statement a bit earlier this year:

"The richest one percent of New Yorkers pay a much smaller percentage of their incomes in state and local taxes than low and middle income families...It's time for New York State to end the special treatment of the favored few by...making New York's tax system fairer and more equitable by increasing the top marginal tax rates on the highest income households - $2 to $7.7 billion depending on the plan adopted."

[for much more on this see ABetterChoiceforNY.org;
ABetterChoiceforNY.org/commentary_1.htm]

Grace Smith House/Poughkeepsie
Children's Defense Fund
Citizen Action of New York
Consumers Union
The Interfaith Alliance of New York State
Civil Service Employees Association
Public Employees Federation
1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East
AFSCME NY
New York State United Teachers
National Education Association of New York
United University Professions
Working Families Party
Green Party of New York State
New York StateWide Senior Action Council
New York State Alliance for Retired Americans
New York State Child Care Coordinating Council
New York State Coalition Against Domestic Violence
New York State Community Action Association
New York State Episcopal Public Policy Network
New York State Health Care Campaign
New York State Labor Religion Coalition
New York State Rural Housing Coalition
New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness
New York AIDS Coalition
New York City Coalition Against Hunger
New York City Employment and Training Coalition
New York Immigration Coalition
New York Jobs with Justice
Communications Workers of America Local 1180
Communications Workers of America, District One
Communications Workers of America, Local 1104, Graduate Students Employees Union
Communications Workers of America, Local 1168, Nurses United
ACCORD Corp
Albany Presbytery
Alliance for Quality Education
American Academy of Pediatrics, District II, New York State
Buffalo Jobs with Justice
Campaign for Healthy Children
Capital District Jobs with Justice
Capital District Labor-Religion Coalition
Caribbean Research Center, Medgar Evers College (CUNY)
Center for Independence of the Disabled
Citizens' Committee for Children of New York
City Project
Class Size Matters
Coalition for Economic Justice
Coalition for the Homeless
Community Health Care Association of New York State
Community Microenterprise Center
Empire Justice Center
Empire State Economic Security Campaign
Episcopal Diocese of New York
Episcopal Diocese of Rochester
Faith & Hunger Network
Family of Woodstock, Inc
Family Planning Advocates of New York
Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies
Fight For Families
Fiscal Policy Institute
FOCUS Churches of Albany
Friends of Night People
Gay Men's Health Crisis
Goddard Riverside Community Center
Greater New York Labor Religion Coalition
Greater Rochester Community of Churches
Harlem Tenants Council
Health & Welfare Council of Long Island
Homeless Alliance of Western New York
Housing Works
Hunger Action Network of New York State
Justice & Peace Committee of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester
Justice & Peace Office - Catholic Charities Elmira
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, Council 82
Long Isalnd Health Access Monitoring Project
Long Island Progressive Coalition
Long Term Care Community Coalition
Lutheran Statewide Advocacy
Medical & Health Research Association of NYC, Inc. (MHRA).
Metro Justice
MicroBIZNY
Mothers at Work
Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
Neighborhood Preservation Coalition of New York State
Neighbors Together
Network of Religious Communities
New Politics Club of Long Island
Office of Justice and Peace, Sisters of Charity of New York
Office of Social Policy, Catholic Family Center Rochester
Opportunities for Broome, Inc
Partnership for the Homeless
Pax Christi Western New York
People United for Sustainable Housing (PUSH)
Politics of Food Program
Prevent Child Abuse in New York
Professional Staff Congress, Local 2334 AFT
Public Policy Committee, Episcopal Diocese of Rochester
Public Utility Law Project of New York
Queers for Economic Justice
Real Majority Project
Regional Center for Independent Living
Rochester Interfaith Health Care Coalition
Rural Housing Coalition of New York State
Schenectady Community Action Program, Inc.
Schenectady Inner City Ministry (SICM)
SEIU Local 200 United
SENSES
Sisters of St. Joseph of Rochester Justice and Peace
Southern Tier Labor-Religion Coalition
Staten Island Welfare Advocacy Network
The Interfaith Alliance of Long Island
The Interfaith Alliance of Rochester
The Interfaith Alliance of the Capital District
The Partnership for the Homeless
The Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at
Shelter Rock
Thorpe Family Residences, Inc.
United Tenants of Albany
University Settlement Society
Utica Citizens in Action
Welfare Reform Network
Welfare Rights Initiative
West Street Child Care Learning Center, Inc.
Westchester Progressive Forum

[Note-- the following Dutchess County residents earlier this year endorsed our Better Choice Budget Petition for New York State as well: Rhinebeck Village Boardmember Svend Beecher, along with Rhinebeck residents Cynthia Carlaw, Meg Crawford, Larry Freedman, Suzi Hieter, John McDonald, Steve Plotnick, Frances Sandiford, Danny Shanahan, and Gary Siegel, other Clinton residents Glen Burger, Judy Malstrom, Chad and Beth Smith, Doug and Elizabeth Smyth, and Art Weiland have also endorsed the Better Choice Budget for NYS petition-- along with county residents Willye Bromfield, Sam Busselle, Bill and Sydna Byrne, Richard Carlson, Nik Colvin, Peter Conklin, Bill Costine, Richard Dennison, Julianne Gadoury, Joan Grishman, Anya Groner, Connie Hogarth and Art Kamell, Doris Kelly, Karen Minervini, Mae Parker-Harris, Nay Petrucelli, George Quasha, Bill Sepe, Carol Talmadge, and Maggie Von Vogt, and MaryAnn Williams; see
petitiononline.com/BCBudget/petition.html.]