Submitted by David, Aug 11, 2008 13:44

The decision to be made on the tax cap proposal that passed the State Senate is not just about siding with the unions or with Paterson. The school tax cap (yes, remember this only applies to public school budgets) addresses none of the underlying causes of high school taxes -- i.e., mindless, unfunded mandates from Albany.

School districts have virtually no control over the amount they are required to contribute to employee pension plans for teachers and non-instructional staff. These rates are set each year by Albany. These rates have spiked by over 250% over the past 8 years. I suppose school districts could minimize this impact — by the wholesale laying off of teachers and staff. Each year, well intentioned requirements are slammed down on school districts, ranging from special education to transportation to a myriad of labor mandates. None of these are ever accompanied by any level of cost/benefit analysis or by the state funding the cost of such proposals.

This madness needs to stop -- and this needs to happen before a tax cap should even be considered or proposed. There's talk about capping future mandates but that's woefully inadequate. With or without a cap, our school funding mechanism is going to fly off the rails and Albany needs to deal with the underlying causes now. A school tax cap is about as dumb a policymaking mechanism as there could be.

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