Teachers union witholds support from 38 state senators over property tax cap
Measure already appears to be dead
ALBANY — The property tax-cap wars intensified Wednesday as a politically potent union said it is withholding support from more than three dozen state senators who last week backed legislation to hold the line on annual property tax increases.
The move by the New York State United Teachers came as its allies against the tax cap backed by Gov. David A. Paterson also stepped up their campaign. It will include mass mailings to voters in addition to a $1.5 million television ad effort that began the day earlier.
Following passage of the cap last week in the Senate, the new campaign is designed to ensure the measure is dead — which it already appears to be — in the Assembly when its members return next week for a one-day special session.
Just in case, NYSUT, one of the most influential unions at the Capitol, sent its message loud and clear Wednesday to the Senate — and indirectly to the Assembly.
“The message is that the tax-cap legislation proposed by the governor and supported by the Senate would decimate our public schools, and we can’t ask our members to work for candidates who would take such an action,” said Richard Iannuzzi, the union’s president.
The union move comes less than three months before the 212-member Legislature is up for re-election in November. NYSUT over the years has poured millions of dollars into helping re-elect lawmakers, especially Republicans in the Senate and Democrats in the Assembly.
Lawmakers privately noted that the union did not close the door to endorsing some of the 38 senators before November. Also, they noted the union did not endorse the challengers to the 38 members not getting a union endorsement Wednesday.
“We’re not going out looking for other people to run against them,” Iannuzzi said.
Instead, the union chief said the lack of endorsement means those 38 lawmakers will receive no campaign donations from NYSUT and won’t be getting its usual support in the way of mailings and Election Day foot soldiers to get out the vote.
“This is really a moral issue,” Iannuzzi said.
Of the 38 lawmakers, 31 are Republicans who voted in a bloc to back Paterson’s bill, which would cap annual growth in school property taxes at 4 percent or 120 percent of the inflation rate, whichever is lower. Among those not getting the group’s support are area Republican Sens. Dale Volker, George Maziarz and Catherine Young and Democrat William Stachowski.
Sen. William Stachowski, a Buffalo Democrat, said he would have liked the NYSUT backing for what could be a tight fall re-election race.
"How could somebody from upstate vote against a tax cap?" Stachowski said.
The lawmaker said he still has the backing of local NYSUT members in his district.
Asked if he was bothered by the NYSUT move, Stachowski said, "I can't do anything about it."
Maziarz declined to comment, and the others did not return calls to comment.
The decision by NYSUT also came as groups aligned with the union are stepping up campaigns against the Paterson plan. The Working Families Party and the Alliance for Quality Education announced Tuesday a $1.5 million television ad campaign timed to try to halt any action on the tax cap when the Legislature returns next week for a special session.
Wednesday, the minor political party also said it was sending 200,000 pieces of literature into the homes of constituents of Assembly members from downstate.
The efforts all are timed to lead up to Tuesday’s special session, at which Paterson has said he wants the property tax issue to be among the items on the table.
But the governor also has an ambitious agenda of trying to get the Legislature to go along with his request that it approve $600 million in state spending cuts to help the budget cope with sliding revenues that are driving up the deficit.
The Assembly Democratic leadership, however, has already said it is not interested in the cap unless there are promises for future education-aid hikes from Albany to cover any loss of property tax revenues. Given the state’s fiscal climate, such promises to lock in future school-aid hikes would seem unrealistic.
As the Working Families Party and its supporters bashed the Paterson campaign, and with the governor vacationing in the Hamptons, the work of defending the plan was left to Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, who chaired the commission that recommended the cap. Adding more layers to the puzzle is that the Working Families Party has been a political supporter of Paterson in the past.
Suozzi lashed out at opponents as being “irresponsible and desperate” for peppering the debate with inaccurate information about the Paterson plan and the experience of a similar property tax program in Massachusetts, but with a more ambitious 2.5 percent annual cap. He said in two decades, Massachusetts has gone from the highest property-taxed state to No. 34, while it leads the nation in fourth-and eighth-grade standardized test results.
Critics say the cap would end up forcing districts to shave spending, which would result in everything from larger class sizes to less help for failing students. But its backers say the 4 percent cap is higher than the inflation rate and that schools should be pushed to save money through efforts such as consolidating services.
“It’s ironic that people who are purporting to represent working families here in New York are trying to derail one of the most important efforts in our state right now to help working families,” said Suozzi.
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