A Donor’s Warning on Property Tax Cap- NY Daily News Blog, August 7, 2008

August 7, 2008

As state senators prepare to return to Albany tomorrow to pass a property tax cap, they’re being warned to think twice about the measure by a powerful donor whose family bankrolls a PAC that has injected itself into past Senate races.

In a Newsday OpEd this morning, Greg Jobin-Leeds urged lawmakers to consider Massachusetts as proof that “a property tax cap - while popular - is an ineffective way either to provide tax help or to protect equitable education funding.”

“Repeatedly, the Massachusetts property tax cap has been held up as an example for New York,” Jobin-Leeds wrote. “While New York’s skyrocketing property taxes must be addressed, to those of us who live in Massachusetts, claims of tax cap success contradict the truth.

(Snip)

“And while the cap reined in property taxes when it was first implemented, taxes have since gone up at a rate similar to New York’s.

One of the goals of the Massachusetts cap was school cost containment. But rather than providing schools with tools to find efficiencies, a cap merely forces spending cuts.”

Jobin-Leeds and various other members of the Leeds family are quite wealthy (they made their money ib publishing) and are also big campaign contributors - giving mostly, but not exclusively, to the Senate Democrats (particularly Andrea Stewart-Cousins) in recent years as they stepped-up their efforts to win the majority.

The Leedses also bankroll NY EdPAC, an education reform group that started getting active in Senate races in 2006.

In that election cycle, the PAC’s parent organization, the League of Education Voters, ran TV ads targeting incumbent GOP senators, including Nick Spano, who lost his seat to Stewart-Cousins that year - her second attempt at unseating him.

The Senate Democrats are under pressure from NYSUT and other unions to reject the tax cap, which is being championed by the GOP and Gov. David Paterson. Senate Minority Leader Malcolm Smith has personally endorsed the cap, and a number of other senators have introduced their own versions.

But Sen. Eric Schneiderman and others have argued against the cap, in part because it leaves out the so-called “big five” districts, including NYC. Schneiderman recently raised the concern that a tax cap will require the state to increase education aid, and city taxpayers, who will get no break under the cap as it is currently proposed, will largely be footing that bill.

“Approximately one half of the General Fund comes from tax payers in New York City, who receive virtually no tax cuts under the Suozzi proposal,” Schneiderman wrote in a recent memo to his Democratic colleagues.

“New York City legislators will have a very hard time supporting a plan under which our highly taxed constituents are forced to subsidize tax cuts for the rest of the state.”