We are in a situation in which wages and prices may be stagnant for some time to come. So a property tax cap that merely limits increases to 2.0% per year would mean higher and higher property taxes compared with the incomes of the people who were paying them. Worse, because of the pension enhancements of recent years, pension spending is set to soar. A property tax cap that exempts pension spending and debts, like the one in New Jersey, is no cap at all. It is a fraud.
What the leaders of the state legislature are going to want, I would imply from recent comments in the press as quoted below, is to defuse the issue while having taxes continue to soar, as the pay and benefits of those who keep the in office continue to rise, and the standard of living of everyone else who isn't a senior citizen continues to fall. What will be offered is symbolic change, a "victory" for the new Governor. But it won't take long for people to see that nothing has changed, and to become even more confused, angry, and open to demagoguery.
According to the New York Post "Silver, a strong ally of the powerful teachers union, has been the leading opponent of a currently proposed cap on the local school and government property taxes that have been crushing many suburban and upstate residents, but he says that will all change if Cuomo becomes governor."
"Silver, a notoriously tough negotiator, won't back every detail of Cuomo's proposed cap, which would limit annual property-tax increases by 50 percent less than the cap proposed by Paterson. 'The issue will be what's covered by the cap and what's not, what's in it and what's not,' said Silver, who noted that New Jersey's recently approved property-tax cap allows voters to override spending limits."
The issue is, what will be sacrificed to pay for all the pension enhancements Silver has pushed through for the past 15 years, and all the debts run up at the same time?
Will public services collapse, with New Yorkers receiving less and less while shouldering the highest state and local tax burden in the country?
Or will that tax burden rise further? Or might the public employees, public employee retirees — those existing, not just future hires, be asked to give something back from what they have taken, to make things more equitable?
The state legislature represents the people with the deals, who if the state isn't destroyed by the time they are through, will fear they have not taken enough.