Well folks, you got you wanted in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity decision. Not only is the minimum only $2 billion more (in 2004 dollars) for NYC schools, but also the state is free to cut school aid to the city, and increase it to the rest of the state, as in 1995-96, and the courts will do nothing about it other than tut tut 13 years later. With the decision in and the election over, there is one last chance for you (and you know who you are) to show you aren't hypocrites.
Use the Zarb Commission estimates of the lower cost of living in Upstate New York, and the additional needs of low income students, to esimate what school districts in the rest of the state should be spending. And then demand that spending in the rest of the state be cut, and that NYC taxpayers no longer have to pay excess state taxes for wasteful spending elsewhere.
Let's hear you talk about the unfairness of NYC taxpayers funding, in part, what the Court of Appeals today held to be either inefficent or gold plated spending elsewhere, even after decades of having their own children denied what the court today held to be the minimum required. It would be perfectly consistent with what the court said today, and with fiscally conservative principles, to the extent that those actually exist. Say that, based on the decision today, education spending in and/or aid to the rest of the state should be slashed (a defensible position based on the national average), or admit that there are different rules for different people, and try to justify this.
Let's hear it. I'll take the $2 billion. I'll even have the city foot the whole bill with local taxes. As long as aid to the rest of the state is reduced to the point where every dollar a city taxpayer pays in comes back, so I don't have to pay anything to those who denied my community for so long.
I'm waiting. But I've been waiting for years. Now is the chance, and the means to reduce the state's structural budget deficit is clear. So let's hear an acknowledgement that NYC's state tax payments have been redistributed to school districts who spend far more despite needs that are much lower, and demand that it end.