Gov. Faso Would Defy Court’s Order To Spend Billions More on City Schools

ALBANY – A Republican candidate for governor, John Faso, said yesterday that if he ran New York, he would not abide by a court decision requiring that the state give billions more dollars in aid to the New York City school system.His tough stance against the courts on the matter of public school funding led the head of the teachers union in New York City to liken Mr. Faso to Southern governors who failed to comply with Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.Even if state courts fail to reverse a state Supreme Court justice’s compliance order from last year demanding that New York give the city school district an additional $5.63 billion in annual operations funding, Mr. Faso said the governor and state lawmakers ought to have the final word over how much more money should be going to city schools.“The courts can’t make the Legislature and the governor appropriate money,” Mr. Faso told The New York Sun. “The notion that we’re going to turn over school funding decisions to a single judge in Manhattan and three hand-picked special masters is absurd.”It was a panel of judicial referees appointed by a state Supreme Court justice, Leland DeGrasse, that determined how much more the state needed to spend on city schools to ensure that students receive what is legally called a “sound basic” education, which courts have ruled is a state constitutional requirement.Mr. Faso said the state couldn’t possibly afford to pay that amount, which he said would require a 25% increase to the state income tax.Mr. Faso’s comments echo the arguments that Governor Pataki has made in legal briefs prepared by the office of the state attorney general, Eliot Spitzer. Mr. Spitzer is running for governor as a Democrat.Responding to Mr. Faso’s comments, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, who was in Albany yesterday meeting with lawmakers, said Mr. Faso “is just as incorrect as those southern governors” who wanted to preserve segregation in public education facilities.The question of how to handle the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case is an issue looming over the governor’s race. It will be the winner of the election, not Governor Pataki, who will be forced to figure out a way to comply with the law on adequate school funding without sending deficits or taxes soaring. While other candidates have questioned the amount that the state Supreme Court says Albany owes, Mr. Faso is going a step further by arguing that the state could defy the courts on this matter.Mr. Spitzer, as the lawyer for the state, has warned against “long-term judicial entanglement in the budget process.”Mr. Spitzer, in the state’s appeal of the state Supreme Court ruling, objected to the mandate that court-ordered studies be used to determine the level of funding for an indefinite period of time, saying it would be an “unwise and unwarranted usurpation of the prerogatives of the executive and legislative and branches.” The brief said New York could comply with the law by spending less than $2 billion on additional aid.On the campaign trail, Mr. Spitzer, however, has said New York needed to comply with the Campaign for Fiscal Equity ruling, though he given few details on how much would be required from the state to ensure “sound basic” education.Mr. Faso, of Columbia County, a former minority leader in the Assembly, said he wasn’t opposed to increased funding for New York City public schools, but said any additional money “should be premised on reforming existing expenditures.”Thomas Suozzi, the Nassau County executive and a likely Democratic candidate for governor, said New York state “should settle the CFE case by providing more money” to the city’s school system. The state would pay for it by cutting fraud and waste out of the Medicaid system, he said.William Weld, a Republican candidate and a former governor of Massachusetts, said the court “is simply not in a position to make all those decisions by itself, in isolation.” Mr. Weld said the state, city, plaintiffs, and the teachers’ unions should sit down and agree on a “global resolution” that would include “changes to union work rules and other so-called ‘management givebacks,’ as well as decisions regarding funding and appropriation levels.”Legal experts say it’s hard to predict what would happen if the governor of New York outright refused to comply with the court’s decision on education funding.Conceivably, the court could hold the governor in contempt of court and jail the state leader, though the governor, being in charge of the department of correctional services, could order his own release. The court could also hold the state in contempt of court and impose stiff fines until New York complies. In similar cases involving other states, including recently in Kansas, courts have threatened to shut down the school system to force the state’s hand.A ruling by the Appellate Division is expected this spring. If that court sides against the state, Mr. Pataki could appeal the compliance order to the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.

Gov. Faso Would Defy Court’s Order To Spend Billions More on City Schools

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