A long-sought, badly needed property tax circuit breaker is now, finally, on the table as the governor and legislative leaders begin the crucial negotiations expected to produce a new budget by its April 1 due date.
As the Times Union explained in its incisive editorial of March 13, the circuit breaker needs to be part of that budget. It's the only measure that can really help those New Yorkers most overburdened by property taxes — the hundreds of thousands of mostly longtime, hardworking residents now paying unsustainable percentages of their stagnant or fixed incomes just to pay their home's property taxes, which continue to escalate after soaring for decades.
As controversy swirls around the governor's proposed property tax freeze and garners the headlines, some may already have forgotten that the governor just a few months ago took the initiative, with the help of two excellent commissions he personally established, to make sure the circuit breaker became a key part of his property tax relief package.
Still fewer will recall that the need for a middle income circuit breaker was included in the governor's 2010 campaign "manifesto" as something to be accomplished when the state's fiscal situation permitted.
We applaud the governor for his follow-through on that commitment and for his recognition of the essential role a circuit breaker plays in giving struggling New Yorkers a fighting chance to keep their homes. There are, inevitably, some changes we'd like to see in the Executive Budget circuit breaker to make it a bit more targeted to those most overburdened. It could be structured more closely on the circuit breaker model the governor cited in the campaign. The Assembly's circuit breaker is quite similar, but we think they have made some improvements, and we commend them for that.
But whatever can or cannot be done to improve it at this time, given the budget constraints, the bill is a necessary starting point — providing at long last some initially modest help and a structure to build on. It must be enacted.
From our perspective as property taxpayer advocates, we see the circuit breaker as the most urgent need, in part because it's so long overdue already. We recognize the proposed two year freeze is designed to deal with some complex structural issues, on which reasonable people will disagree. We don't see it as providing much meaningful property tax relief, and it leaves us wondering what happens after the two years. Most frustrating, it would further delay full implementation of the circuit breaker.
We are greatly disappointed, if not overly surprised, that the Senate Majority rejected a circuit breaker in its one house bill.
We would urge especially Long Island senators, many of whom have been cool to the concept, to consider the particularly high impact which estimates indicate the circuit breaker would have on taxpayers in that region.