Reisman quotes City Journal essay

Taxpayers bear wounds of battles to stretch government revenues

By Phil Reisman
Journal News columnist • February 15, 2009


Last week, the White Plains City School District inked a $210,000-a-year contract with its new superintendent, which is fairly standard pay for first-year school chiefs these days.

At least it is in this neck of the woods.
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But what caught my eye were some of the $47,000 worth of benefits attached to the deal. One of them was a $6,500 payment to Social Security - a perk which may or may not be unusual. In any case, it struck me as unfair that taxpayers would be required to assume a portion of a public official's tax burden.

There was also a $6,000 car allowance, $10,000 in moving expenses and assorted health benefits.

On top of 46 vacation, sick and personal days, the new "supe," Christopher Clouet, will get 15 holidays. That may seem like a lot of holidays, but all of them are legitimate.

There's nothing crazy in there like what the Malverne town police union on Long Island got away with until somebody blew the whistle on them. When no one was looking, the cops snuck in more than 20 extra "special days" - among them Elizabeth Cady Stanton Day, National Day of Katrina Remembrance, Children's Day, Haym Salomon Day, Shirley Chisholm Day and my personal favorite, Gerald Ford Day.

Perhaps in good times, no one would raise a fuss over the generosity afforded Clouet, who is getting a $78,000 raise over his previous post in the New London, Conn., school district.

But these are far from good times. Everybody's tapped, or fear they will be soon, and yet the demand for taxpayers' money is increasing at an alarming rate.

The same week Clouet's contract was announced, it was reported elsewhere that a proposed payroll tax to help solve the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's budget problems would cost White Plains schools $330,000. That would wipe out Clouet's pay and benefits package and probably the salaries of a couple of teacher aides as well.

There's mounting resistance to the payroll tax, which would be imposed on businesses, nonprofit groups, governmental agencies and school districts, and would raise $1.5 billion a year. For one thing, it's difficult to see how it won't result in more layoffs and contribute further to the state's downward spiral. More unemployed would mean fewer people paying fares and cause the MTA to fall into a self-perpetuating fix.

Nevertheless, if the MTA gets its way, you might think it would be appropriate for Clouet to at least pay his Social Security bill like everybody else. And what's with the car allowance?

This "shared sacrifice" idea sounds nice, but it's not going to come with altruistic glee. Just ask my barber Tony in Larchmont, who is understandably steamed over Gov. David Paterson's idea of a haircut tax.

The problem with surcharges like this is that they don't merely raise revenue, they change consumer behavior. If Paterson's goofy soda tax is intended to discourage fat kids from drinking liquefied sugar, then it's only logical to conclude that a tonsorial tax would cause people to grow their hair longer. We've already endured a dreary period of long-haired skinnies - it was called "The '60s."

And frankly, the Age of Aquarius wasn't at all what it was cracked up to be.

New York is in such lousy shape financially that the so-called "millionaire's tax" has devolved into a proposal to increase the tax rate on anybody earning $250,000 a year or more. This will be a hard sell, but if it succeeds, three things could happen as a result.

First, a good number of state residents will pack their golf clubs and golden retrievers and flee across the border to Canada or worse, New Jersey. Overnight, Bedford Hills will look like it was hit by a neutron bomb. Second, the diehards who stay behind will do something that heretofore was thought impossible: They will break the nearly 100 percent incumbency rate in Albany and throw half the bums out.

And third, Rudy Giuliani will become the next governor. (Yecch.)

Paterson's dream of shared sacrifice could work, however. But the trick is he can't raise taxes on the richest citizens without getting concessions from the state's unions. He's already asked them to give back a three-percent raise scheduled to take effect April 1 and defer five days' pay. They've all but told him to shove it.

Actually, those are modest proposals given the rate of layoffs, pay cuts and unpaid furloughs going on in the private sector. Elected officials at all levels of government should press public employees to pay more for health care and pension benefits, too. The scam of overtime to pad police and fire pensions is a scandal and should be reined in.

Of course, none of this can be easy in a state whose array of possible successors to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat included, of all people, Randi Weingarten, the president of the all-powerful teacher's union.

But the party is over, for everyone. That's been decided.

The question yet to be answered is how the ailing state can be cured without killing it.

In an article he wrote last week for the online City Journal, Yonkers City Councilman John Murtagh observed that the burdensome cost of doing business in New York was probably the reason a large employer, the Precision Valve Corp., recently decided to leave the city for the cheaper climes of South Carolina.

Murtagh, a Republican, listed the usual suspects. New York pays double the national average in Medicaid; overall per capita spending is the fourth highest in the U.S.; personal income taxes and real estate taxes are the highest in the country and so on.

"As a result," Murtagh wrote, "New York has seen a steady emigration of citizens and employers for years. In the current downturn, that emigration could turn into a stampede."

There's also a painful human side to this political battle that hasn't received the attention it deserves.

On Wednesday, Assemblyman George Latimer, D-Rye, hosted a community meeting in Larchmont to hear testimony from people affected by the state's planned budget cuts. Fifty-nine people spoke for four hours.

There were librarians, kids from youth groups, school board members and health care workers. A blind woman spoke as a did a woman with multiple sclerosis. Another woman got up and talked about being laid off from her Wall Street job.

A State University of New York student talked about how the poorest students could not afford the increase in state college tuition.

Somebody talked about the MTA payroll tax.

A Rye man stated the paradox of the need to raise local property taxes while cutting school spending because of the drop in state aid and the reduction in the mortgage-transfer tax revenue.

"As much as we're going to have make cuts because the numbers demand it, when you look in the eyes of these human beings, you feel a little differently about the bloodlessness of the numbers," Latimer said.

One final note: This column will be on hiatus through next week. While I'm off, I plan to celebrate Gerald Ford Day by misdirecting golf balls and falling down the stairs.

Reach Phil Reisman at preisman@lohud.com or call 914-694-5008. See more at reisman.lohudbogs.com.