Speaker Silver's turn on tax cap

We need to see your tax cap, Mr. Speaker.

A few days ago, passage of a meaningful cap on property taxes, hugely popular with voters, appeared stalled.

Now, while obstacles remain, prospects for a cap have improved. But State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) must put forward a plan. A reasonable starting point from him might be a cap that excludes pension cost increases beyond the rate of inflation.

Public unions, local politicians and school boards are fighting the tax cap with every tool at their disposal. Silver has never had much use for a cap, or much reason to oppose one. His power emanates from New York City, where the debate has little meaning. For Silver, the tax cap is mostly an issue he can use to bargain for things he does care about. So the speaker likes to say he'll support one as long as it has lots of exemptions, won't last more than a few years and is in the same bill as his rent-control extension.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) has been in a trickier position. He shepherded Cuomo's proposed cap of 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is less, through as a one-house bill, then said he would refuse to negotiate further -- grabbing the mantle of fiscally conservative purity while nothing happened. One-house bills rarely become law, and it's never been likely a 2 percent cap with no exclusions would pass.

So Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo barnstormed across the state to decry these tactics (and Skelos and Silver) to the people, and it appears to have worked. While Silver grumbled that the governor ought to forget the speechifying and return to the backrooms of Albany where governing traditionally happens, Skelos met privately with Cuomo to remind him that they found success on the state budget earlier this year by playing nice, not nasty.

The two appear to have healed their breach, so the heat should be on Silver to produce a tax cap bill for the Assembly and begin negotiations in earnest. It's the responsibility of Long Island's seven Assembly Democrats to apply that heat. The Republican minority is vocal in its calls for Silver to move on the cap, but it's his Long Island Democrats, including two in leadership positions, who must drive it home.

Even the objections of the unions are looking increasingly silly. New York State United Teachers president Richard C. Iannuzzi claimed last week that the passage of so many school budgets with tax hikes in excess of 2 percent signaled voters don't want or need limits.

He failed to mention that turnout was about 15 percent and many of those districts would have seen bigger tax increases if they had rejected the spending plans and were left with "austerity" budgets. The willingness of voters to pass the proposed budgets even when the alternative was significantly cheaper, many of them with the 60 percent majority it will take to override the proposed cap in the future, is actually an argument for the cap, since it shows voters will be able and willing to override them when they feel it is necessary.

There never has been -- and probably never will be -- a better time to get a cap. The pressure should continue until Silver presents a bill, Skelos negotiates and Cuomo signs.