The following was submitted as a My View column
to the Times Herald Record in December 2007. 
It was authored by Brendan Coyne (Cornwall) and approved by
OCSBA's Delegates at our December meeting. 

School Property Tax Reform: No laughing matter

      Earlier this year at a Sullivan County Chamber of Commerce breakfast, New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver joked that New York State has no plan for school property tax reform. He didn’t elaborate.

     But four days after an Oct. 3 Times Herald-Record editorial suggested he look a little harder, Silver wrote a My View acknowledging that the burden of high property taxes is no joke. State Senator John J. Bonacic also wrote a My View Oct. 7 saying the senate had passed a plan to phase out the property tax over five years. Silver said the plan, which the editorial called a “good starting place,” would give far more state aid to wealthier districts than needier districts. The state assembly didn’t support the plan.

     The Orange County School Boards Association believes that we can all agree that school property taxes are no laughing matter. Most homeowners are struggling to pay their taxes; many have lost their homes.

     The fact is New York State has many school property tax reform plans – coming from both sides of the aisle; coming from tax reform groups; coming from education organizations such as the New York State School Boards Association. OCSBA would like a legislative conference committee to resolve the differences among the plans and hammer out a solution. OCSBA, as always, stands ready to offer its resources and support.

     The senate also recently passed legislation that would establish a blue ribbon commission on property tax reform to study and make recommendations on alternatives to the existing real property taxation system. OCSBA reminds legislators that they have already established similar commissions and have held numerous hearings to gather information.

While Albany continues to increase funding for schools annually, its portion of the education funding has dwindled. At its peak, in 1968-69, the state covered 48% of school funding; today it provides 43%, when School Tax Relief (STAR) is calculated in. But STAR is not the answer; it offers no reform.

     Reforming school funding, however, is not the only way that state government could ease the school property tax burden. State mandates in and out of the classroom contribute to the strain. Burdensome legislation such as the 1912 Wicks Law, requiring localities to hire multiple contractors and driving costs up by as much as 30%, should be repealed. The Triborough Agreement of the Taylor Law leans too far toward labor and away from taxpayers. It should be reformed to force arbitrators to factor in the ability of taxpayers to pay and to encourage the parties to come to terms without resorting to arbitration. At their recent convention, NYSSBA delegates overwhelming passed a resolution calling for reform of the Triborough Amendment.

     The real property tax collection system has serious shortcomings and has led to a lack of public confidence in the taxing mechanism. In calling for school property tax reform last year, NYSSBA passed a resolution that addresses the need for reform of the real property tax collection system.

And while school boards are concerned with how Albany funds education, OCSBA doesn’t want to forget the federal government’s obligation to fund education. The federal government provides just 8% of the education funding in New York, down from what it was and should be. In addition, school districts must comply with the federal No Child Left Behind program, mandated but not fully funded.

     So New York State does indeed have school property tax reform plans; it does have a starting place. OCSBA calls on state legislators to reach an ending place.

 Brendan Coyne, President, Cornwall Board of Education

On behalf of the Orange County School Boards Association
 

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The following information was reviewed at a recent OCSBA meeting.

Year - 2003
State income taxes paid from Orange County  -  279,357,533
Sales tax from Orange County  -  186,462,499
State Aid to Orange County schools  -  348,092,891
The Difference  -  117,727,141

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The following letters were written by OCSBA members
in response to the recent article by TH-R's columnist
Beth Quinn on school boards and school taxes.

Carl Onken, NYSSBA President

To the editor:
 In Beth Quinn’s March 27 column, she tells us about “Jack” who is 93 and pays $12,000 a year in school taxes alone. Be assured that Jack, or at least the Jacks who live in much more modest homes, is someone school board members think about, a lot.  Few board members enjoy the budget preparation meetings, for the same reasons you don’t like the results – the necessity to both raise taxes and cut back on what the school districts are doing.  Board members are taxpayers too and they know what Jack and every other taxpayer experiences every time tax bills go out.  The impact is probably even more devastating on young families who have not reached their peak earning years but are trying to give their children a good start by living in a location where the schools offer a decent program.

 Probably the only thing Boards of Education think about more than the high cost (and the consequent high local property taxes) is the big pay-off, that is, the education of the students who attend their public schools.  You point out that you see students coming to college with weaker writing skills than students had a decade ago.  Board members are aware of the problem, but your main suggestion – cutting costs – will result in larger class sizes when most research indicates we need smaller classes. (We also need more time on task, but longer school days and longer school years also cost more, not less.)  The rationale for small classes is that it helps students, not that it makes the teachers’ jobs easier.  Ideally, public schools try to offer the kind of program that parents would choose even if they had the means to send their children anywhere they wanted.  This doesn’t require that schools have the best of everything (facilities, equipment and, most importantly, faculty), but it does mean that the whole package has to be pretty good.  Jack knows that throwing more money at kids is not the solution.  I don’t recommend it either, not that we’ve come close to trying it.  Don’t fret, it’s not likely to be tried anytime soon.

 School boards are taking responsibility for the results of public school education, and that is despite our inability to adequately fund the kind of schools that have been shown to give every child the opportunity to succeed.  In my 28 years on local school boards, I have never participated in a budget-making meeting where saying “no” wasn’t a prominent part of the discussion. Boards of education turn to the local property tax because they have nowhere else to go. Comparisons with other states on percentage of state revenues devoted to education or the percentage of overall education spending coming from state sources indicates public education is not a particularly high priority for New York State government.

 School boards would love to have Jack’s help in changing that. 

Carl Onken, President, New York State School Boards Association

With best regards,
Fred Cook

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