Bill Hammond of the Daily News writes in favor of capping the permitted increase in school property taxes in New York State, in order to prevent school districts from continuing to ramp them up no matter how much aid they receive. I'm glad that someone is willing to concede that New York State school spending outside the city is too high, far higher than is needed for a superb education let alone an adequate one. Hammond recommends capping property tax increases at 2 1/2 per year, as Massachusetts has. As I've noted many times, however, a tax cap based on a percentage increase from the current level merely guarantees that those who have spent the most will continue to be permitted to spend the most, forever, while those spending less (admittedly a shrinking group) can never catch up, no matter what. Worse, thanks to STAR, it ensures that those currently spending more will continue to receive more state education assistance than those spending less.
This problem, if you accept that using the power of government to keep the better off better off and the less well off worse off is a problem rather than a goal, is easily solved by limiting the cap to high spending districts (most of them at this point, but not all). And, what should be limited is the increase in spending per child, not just the taxes on homes, to keep from increasing the inequities based on the amount of commercial property in a district, and to limit the tax burden on (apparently less politically significant) businesses and apartment tenants. My limit would be 20 percent above the national average, adjusted for the cost of living downstate, and adjusted in districts with a concentration of very high needs special education children. With the cap limited to those high spending districts, perhaps the permitted increase should be zero. Or, perhaps it should be inflation minus one percent, in case the devaluation of the dollar gets out of hand and prices start jumping at 1970s levels.
We've had a policy of giving more state aid to those who spend the most, rewarding waste and creating a huge and expensive jobs program, while redistributing eduacational resources away from New York City, which has a concentation of high needs children, (previously) low school spending, an a high tax burden thanks to its local income tax. A cap linked to existing conditions would merely perpetuate the results of that policy. It would be better to gradually reverse it. Reducing taxes without reducing spending, and providing more to those who have more while demanding accoutability and efficiency only from those who have less, has been policy for long enough.