Monday Briefing: Tax Cap Passes, But Will It Survive?

by Contributor | August 11, 2008 10:59 am

So the Senate on Friday approved a cap on your school property taxes.  The Governor wants it badly.

Problem is:  Assembly Democrats — and their union backers[1] — don’t want it.

In fact, the unions may withhold endorsements[2] of Senators who voted yes.

But polls show that taxpayers do want it, and that’s got Assembly leader Shelly Silver in a tight bind[3].

The Senate and Assembly come back to town in a couple of weeks for a special session.  There’ll be negotiations behind the scenes, but no action till then.

Incidentally, and perhaps not at all coincidentally, someone keeps beating the drum about the amount of money Paterson is spending[4] to run the Governor’s office.

Elsewhere:

• Meet some of the state’s highest paid employees[5].
• Tom Golisano’s sending out questionnaires[6] to those who might like some of his cash.  Not everyone wants it[7].
• Hard times are always good times for somebody.  In this case, it’s counties, flush with cash from gas taxes[8].
• Democrats’ hopes of taking over the State Senate next year suffered a setbacks when one Dem Senator quit to run a state agency.  Meantime, there’s talk wondering whether if the Dems do take over, will they be able to lead[9]?
• One other item from the Senate session last week — action on collecting taxes from Native businesses[10].

Apropos of Not Much:

• Maybe the next scandal will be the New York State Fair’s entertainment contracts[11].
• Department of “who knew?”: Mario Cuomo served 16 years but never left an official portrait behind.  His is one of several missing portraits of Governors[12].
• NYC measures the pay-for-potty experiment’s success, one quarter at a time[13].

Source URL: https://oswegocountytoday.com/opinion/letters-to-the-editor/editors-desk/monday-briefing-taxcappasses/

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