Politics on the Hudson

The state Republican Committee, perhaps in a sign of a new approach under new Chairman Ed Cox, is out with a mailer hitting key state Senate districts knocking Democrats for cutting the state’s STAR property-tax rebate checks this year and adding dozens of new taxes and fees.

Here’s one a reader from Westchester County forwarded that targets Gov. David Paterson and Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers.

With the state’s fiscal problems, the Democratic-controlled Legislature and Paterson agreed to do away with the checks, which averaged about $385 a household and would have hit homeowners’ mailboxes around this time this year. The program would have cost the state about $1.7 billion.

The mailers also promote the online petition set up by Senate Republicans to restore the STAR rebates.

Updated: Matt Anderson, spokesman for Paterson’s budget office, responded with this statement.

“Restoring the STAR rebate check program without identifying any resources to pay for it would increase the current-year deficit to nearly $4 billion,” he said.

“As far as I can tell, the mailer and web site do not include any information on how they would pay for that additional spending, as well as cover the remainder of the deficit.”