Big Spending Bureaucrats Cause Today's Budget Crisis 3-30-03

Letter to the editor - Response to: "Students Shouldn't bear brunt of budget mess" Albany Times Union - 3-30-03

In order to counter the assertions in the above named article by Charles Dedrick and Terrance Brewer, I will need to directly challenge you, the reader, to think. You will need to put away the emotions that Superintendents Dedrick and Brewer hope to tap into.

The war in Iraq has nothing to do with the budget mess we are in, so it seems that the authors have cited it in the first sentence of their article in order to solicit an emotional response from parents. They go on to suggest that because of the war, we parents instinctively hold our children a little closer, but politicians - namely Governor Pataki - don't put children first.

In Governor Pataki's eight years, he has given New York's school districts more than enough money to improve student performance (if money had anything to do with it). When Governor Cuomo was in office, Terrance Brewer's East Greenbush Central School District saw annual decreases in state aid of approximately a half million dollars per year. I distinctly remember attending school board meetings presided over by Mr. Brewer over eight years ago. During then Senator Pataki's election campaign, school board members would make speeches denouncing his plan to cut state income taxes. They said his plan to cut income taxes would only cause local property taxes to rise.

At the same time, these same school board members passed a $27.9 million remodeling project for all the elementary schools in our district. They did so by selling local voters to the fact that the state would pick up some 90% or more of the cost.

A few years later they passed a $7,000,000.00 proposition to put new computers in the schools. Followed by a $40,000,000.00 remodeling project for Columbia High School.
All sold the same way: Our local property taxes will go up a mere pittance because the "State" will pay for it.

What they did, in effect and in fact, was to create unfunded mandates for the State. We, the local taxpayers, got to vote in massive spending projects that the State was obligated to pay for. And we in East Greenbush were not alone. Other districts in Rensselaer County followed our lead and approved plans that doubled and quadrupled what we spent. Over the next several years a great many of the State's 700+ school districts would approve massive building projects. It doesn't take much of an education to do the math. At a time when businesses and families were leaving this state for a better, less taxing life, education bureaucrats were mindlessly planting the seeds for today's economic crisis.

Governor Pataki willingly accepted the challenge. He created the STAR program to guaranty an increasing state contribution to school districts while lifting the burden on local property taxpayers. His plan included a spending cap on the districts that had to be abandoned due to fierce opposition in the Democratically controlled State Assembly.

Mr. Brewer and Mr. Dedrick go on to claim that: "Good schools attract businesses, creating jobs and boosting future tax revenues." In reality, good schools do not attract businesses. Today's business managers have an entire world in which to find their employees. They do not have to hire locally. Profitable businesses create jobs. Profitable businesses boost tax revenues.

They also claim: "Good schools increase home values. Ask any real estate agent." Well, I was a real estate agent, a pretty darned good one at that. I was top of my GRI class. I got a sales award in my 1st month with one of the biggest agencies in the Capitol District. I've owned income property in the city and residences in the suburbs and I can tell you first hand that most people who buy homes don't even have kids in school, could care less about the claims of quality that every school district makes, and understand that thousands of dollars per year in property taxes mean thousands of dollars less value in their homes.

My parents raised three children in this area. My younger sisters graduated from Siena and then moved to states of opportunity; Nashua, New Hampshire and Boca Raton, Florida. They have been there ever since. They are raising their families there. The public schools there are of average quality. Their taxes are low. Their property values are incredibly high. I can guaranty that when their children graduate from college they won't be settling down around here!

On the other hand, I never went to college. I have owned my own business in the Capitol District nearly all of my adult life. I have paid an incredible, actually staggering amount of taxes. I stay here for love only. But there is only so much more of this fiscal insanity I can take. I can guaranty that if a stubborn conservative like me finally says: "ENOUGH! I'M LEAVING", I won't be alone. Maybe New York's liberal spending bureaucrats will wake up when they have to plead their pathetic case for more taxes to the rocks and the trees!

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DRC