Albany state officials are pressed on to alter the state's property-tax cap to have at least a 2 percent growth each year, recent report says.
Local leaders and democrats have been wanting this implemented so it would not be tied to the inflation rate. On the flip side, it looks like their request will likely be trashed as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Senate Republicans are the ones who see the effectiveness of the current property tax cap's effectiveness since it has been implemented in 2011.
Poughkeepsie Journal reports that the governor has no regrets about the property tax cap increase.
"We make no apologies for enacting a tax cap that broke the cycle of skyrocketing property tax increases, saved property taxpayers $4.5 billion alone in 2015 and helped ensure that New York is no longer the high tax capital of the world," Rich Azzopardi, spokesman of Cuomo, said in an interview.
Sources also say that the request on changing the property tax cap has become more of an issue as many entities have been affected because of low of inflation. Schools, villages and cities have the tax cap of 0.12 percent.
In fact, Michael Borges, executive director of the state's Association of School Business Officials, said that the school districts are facing a 0.12 percent or 12/100's of a percent increase in their tax cap this year.
Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, D-Bronx, said a straight 2 percent tax cap is a good idea, of which Assembly Democrats are completely amenable to. Assembly Democrats believe that the 2 percent property tax cap would help local government and schools each year. In fact, News WBFO features one comment questioning the schools' capacity to serve the neediest children with a tax cap that is not enough to support the kids.
"How can schools continue to serve some of our neediest children with a tax cap that limits what they can raise to support our kids?" one commentator asked via News WBFO.
In a conference held last Wednesday, Heastie also expressed his and that of the assembly members' full support in that tax cap percentage, saying that the 2 percent is ideal as it would accomplish two things -- to give localities a financial capacity to pay for the rising expenses that they have to deal with each year and to constraint property taxes.
However, Heastie sadly said that they are the only ones who support this new idea. "Unfortunately, the governor and the Senate don't see the same way we do."
