McKinstry: Tax-cap storm clouds on horizon

Ken Eastwood doesn't think much of Albany lawmakers. Nor Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, for that matter -- not when it comes to the property tax cap.

And what about the governor's Mandate Relief Council, an 11-member group charged with coming up with ways to relieve local governments and school districts of state burdens and costs?

"If you want to put something off, create a committee," he says.

Eastwood may sound like a coffee-shop curmudgeon, but he is superintendent of Middletown School District in Orange County. He won't sit idly by as he sees school districts cutting teachers and programs like kindergarten and athletics -- all because of what he views as an ill-conceived mechanism for controlling skyrocketing property taxes: the property tax cap.

So he's mounting a campaign to challenge the popular law that limits how much districts and municipalities across New York can add to their levies every year. He's trying to enlist other districts around the state to join him in this battle, and if enough do, he'll file suit.

His legal rationale is that by requiring a 60 percent supermajority to override the cap, the state violates the one-person, one-vote premise in the U.S. Constitution. A yes vote is worth less than a no.

Consider New Paltz, where a 59.4 percent majority supported a school budget with a 4.4 percent increase, yet the "yeses" lost.

Eastwood and his Garden City-based attorney, Howard Miller, maintain that the trajectory for school districts isn't good -- not for providing a decent education or for staying within the confines of the cap. And neither bodes well for taxpayers.

They also say that the cap discriminates against poorer districts -- and by extension minorities -- since those districts, Middletown included, presumably will have to cut core programs at higher rates than wealthier ones, a state constitutional issue.

One can never overestimate the creativity that lawyers bring to their arguments, and logic and common sense often seem not to apply. So it's best to leave it to a judge -- if it comes to that -- to sort all this out.

But the cap was widely welcomed last year as a way to slow the chronic increases that have made New York one of the highest taxed states in the country. The governor pushed it and after this last round of school budget votes, which showed most districts were abiding by it, he has a leg up on the argument.

For the cap to work long-term, however, it must be wedded to serious efforts to control personnel costs like automatic step increases and a slew of other expenses passed down to schools.

This whole argument isn't about going to court as much as it is about having a discussion about how to best pay for public education.

And pressuring state lawmakers to move on mandates, those unfunded directives to provide certain services.

Miller, who will be on a panel discussion about how the cap and mandates affect public education on June 28 at Western Suffolk BOCES on Long Island, said there are efforts around the state to have these open discussions, and perhaps, educate the public on what all these colliding issues mean.

Jay Worona, general counsel for the New York State School Boards Association, said although the association is considering backing the suit, it appreciates that taxes are high. But so are requirements placed on districts.

And there's a "paradigm paralysis" in New York on how to do things like fund schools, lower taxes and provide mandate relief.

You sure don't need a judge to weigh in on that.

Gerald McKinstry is a member of the Newsday editorial board.