No Tax Cap, But Assembly Offering Home-Heating Help
The Democratic-controlled Assembly said today it will hold news conferences across the state to discuss their plan to help homeowners with the expected home-heating crisis this winter.
Assembly Energy Committee Chairman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, (left) will discuss the chamber’s plan starting Monday in Albany and Syracuse.
Despite the state facing a $6.4 billlion budget gap next year, the Assembly wants to spend $800 million on home-heating relief, including $550 million to enhance the Home Energy Assistance Program for middle-class families and $250 million for energy conservation measures.
They want to pay for it with a two percent gross receipts tax on large oil companies and a retroactive tax from when the state capped sales tax at $2 a gallon.
Cahill is also heading to Niagara Falls and Rochester on Tuesday; Yonkers and Long Island on Tuesday, Aug. 12; and Kingston on Wednesday, Aug. 13.
Some leaders have grumbled that Democrats are using the home-heating plan as a red herring to steer talk away from their opposition to a school-property-tax cap.
Yet Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Gov. David Paterson, as well as economists and national leaders, have warned that prices for home-heating oil are going to skyrocket this winter.
As Paterson said during a speech Thursday in Washington D.C., “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure New York families don’t freeze when it gets cold, including moving resources from other programs to accommodate that.”
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What the people in New York need is a TAX CAP. Every other proposal to try to ease the burden on New Yorkers is ploy and a lure to steer the talk away from the Tax Cap.
But it will not work, we can see through all of this foolishness.
PROPERTY TAX CAP NOW
Property tax cap. This will give a free rein for schools to raise taxes 4% – even if they do not need it. So you will have a minimum of a 4% tax increase. Other expenses will be put up as propositions and when sports, busing, lunch, etc. go to vote, people tend to vote yes. then those costs will be added OVER AND ABOVE THE 4%...so you will still be paying a hugh bill. Forget about senior citizens. they will still be forced out of their homes. There has to be a better plan than this. this sounds good, but….a minimum of 4% increase ever year and taxpayers have no say?....is to much.
This “cap.” when finally negotiated and hashed-out will be next to worthless. They will find a way to make everyone up in Albany look like a hero, and accomplish next to nothing. Same old, same old. Hold their feet to the fire!
Summary of above Democrats’ answer to tax cap controversy: TAX gross receipts, implement retroactive TAX. TAX, TAX, TAX the TAX, and then TAX whatever’s left over. Anyone bother to scan their energy, phone bills, etc.? Until just RECENTLY, we were paying a tax implemented to pay for the Spanish American War of 1898.