Governor Andrew Cuomo is sticking by his pitch that his 2014-15 budget proposal will leave the state with a $2 billion surplus in two years.
And when he came to Rochester last week to sell local officials on his budget plan, he said the surplus would allow the state to cut some taxes for businesses and homeowners.
But members of a local coalition of labor leaders, community activists, and faith leaders say that instead of tax cuts, the money should be used for state programs, particularly education. The group, which is part of the statewide New York Inequality campaign, laid out its objections to Cuomo’s tax cut plan during a press conference the day prior to his visit. And members of the coalition held a protest rally outside of Cuomo’s budget presentation.
“This budget is one that doesn’t work for all New Yorkers,” said Crescenzo Scipione, a Metro Justice member, at the press conference.
Other speakers said the tax cuts would continue existing inequities. Tom Gillett, staff director for New York State United Teachers’ Rochester region office, said the governor’s budget includes a 3.2 percent increase in school aid. That increase sounds generous, but it doesn’t make up for funding cuts several years ago, he said.
Cuomo’s budget proposal would also hold SUNY, CUNY, and community-college funding flat for the third consecutive year, Gillett said.
Over the past 30 years, students at state colleges have been repeatedly hit with tuition increases, said Jim Bearden, a SUNY Geneseo professor. Students are now covering a larger portion of the schools’ operating costs, due to stagnant state funding, he said.
This article appears in Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2014.
As always, some groups whine that we need to spend more on schools, show some improvement and I might agree, but the money always seems to make no difference to anyone except the salaries of the same local groups that have not contributed to better the education process.
We are the highest taxed state in America. We have some of the highest property taxes too. We are also the most business-unfriendly state and the population is declining steadily as people flee the economic conditions brought on by our liberal tax-and-spend utopia. And yet all of the groups who are on the receiving end of the state’s largesse are in total denial. They just want the money to keep on coming regardless of the taxpayer’s ability, and the state economy, to support unlimited funding. The problem is sooner or later you run out of other peoples’ money and we’ve reached that point in New York.
It is easy to complain about our taxes. What I rarely hear are what should be cut from the budget. I always read about how poor the economy is and with how much of our tax dollars are spent on ‘Economic Development’, I expect there would be demonstrated positive results. After all there are metrics for teachers, why not for economic development?
Frankly, I believe schools are failing (anyone else surprised when a cashier can’t make change without an app?, or cannot write a coherent sentence? ). We can’t have a whole school of bad teachers. We do have an elitist State Board of Education. My suspicion is that money alone will not solve this, nor will Charter Schools, or home schooling. Tuition costs have risen well beyond inflation, My alma maters are not shy about asking for donations (as are our public schools). Why?
I am going to sound like older folks I made fun of when I was a teenager by saying I wish some things were the way they used to be. The rich didn’t amass huge salaries (including benefits) as a measure of their personal worth, it was how much in taxes they paid. Schools didn’t pander to those kids who didn’t want to learn. While we are all created equally, we all do not have the same abilities. That fact seems to be ignored. College was not expected for everyone, there were other respected paths to a good living.
We respected each other a lot more. We spent a lot less time in self promotion. We worked together to address problems. We didn’t always insist our way was the only way. We didn’t have African, Italian, Polish, Puerto Rican hyphenated Americans (everyone celebrated their cultures at home).
From a WXXI news story in September 2012: “The Rochester City School District ranks among the top 10 in the nation when it comes to per pupil spending for large school districts. That’s according to Govistics – a web-based product of the Center for Governmental Research. The data shows Rochester spends nearly $20,984 per student…Rochester City School District Superintendent Bolgen Vargas calls the report inaccurate. He says the district spends roughly $17,000 per student.” Oh, it’s only $17,000 per student.
For that kind of money those student should be getting college degrees! Will throwing more money at the RCSD make it do a better job educating students? Maybe we should try spending $30,000 or $40,000 per student per year and see it that helps.