New York Post: Unions Run The State, Now More Than Ever
Today’s New York Post was just depressing on pension and tax issues. First, in YOU HURT, THEY PROSPER, an editorial predicted a massive tax hike to hit the state:
“Is it fair to ask the people who make more to pay a little bit more in this time of crisis?” he wondered last week, arguing for a “millionaire’s tax” to help balance Albany’s books. But “a little bit more” from New York’s remaining millionaires won’t come close to closing the state’s $13 billion deficit.
That’s why the speaker and his public-employee union bosses are laying the groundwork for a potentially massive expansion of the state’s income tax – one aimed squarely at the middle class. And they just may get it. The numbers don’t lie: State budgeteers say that the number of millionaires statewide has dropped 18 percent since 2007, while their combined gross income has fallen by some $60 billion. Thus, while the millionaire’s tax Silver pushed through the Assembly last year might have been expected to raise $2.6 billion a year, he’s now speaking of revenues that may not hit $1.5 billion. That’s still almost $12 billion short. So: How deeply would an income tax need to reach to get the job done? Well, a temporary income-tax boost back in 2003 (when the state’s finances were far less dire) hit New Yorkers making as little as $100,000 a year. And Silver’s union friends are already hard at work dragging the tax debate in precisely that direction.
Next, in UNIONS INFLICTING LABOR PAIN ON GOV, a news article notes that public employee unions are set to begin attacking the governor for daring to timidly oppose income tax hikes:
Little more than a month into his first legislative session, Gov. Paterson has come under a ferocious attack from organized labor – earlier, bigger and more personal than those that buckled his predecessors. Enraged at Paterson’s refusal to discuss an income-tax hike as an alternative to $9.5 billion in budget cuts, unions have opened both barrels on their longtime ally. In television campaigns, mass mailings and grass-roots rallies, they’re firing directly at the Democratic governor.
Then, in TAX HIKE ‘THREAT TO STATE’S RECOVERY’ another articles notes the threat that such hikes would have on the ability of the state to attract and keep businesses and employees, if a threatened 13.95z% tax rae is put in place:.
New York City millionaires already pay the highest income taxes in the nation. The most ambitious tax-hike plan in Albany – a $6 billion proposal – would raise the city’s top rate to 13.95 percent, or 35 percent higher than California’s 10.30 percent.
Finally, in FDNY DISABILITY PAY CAUSE FOR ALARM: POL,
A city lawmaker yesterday called for a “crackdown on abuses” after The Post reported that more than seven in 10 firefighters have been retiring on disability pensions, costing cash-strapped New York nearly $1 billion a year.
Does Bloomberg’s proposal, outlined in my prior post, stand a chance, weak as it is?
