Atlantic International Partnership Headlines:Analysis: Celebration of NY’s tax cap a bit early

http://atlanticinternationalpartnershipreviews.com/2011/06/atlantic-international-partnership-headlinesanalysis-celebration-of-nys-tax-cap-a-bit-early/

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Tuesday’s big announcement of a long-sought agreement to cap property tax growth in New York was great politics, but soon after the TV lights faded it became clearer the celebration was premature because major elements continue to be negotiated behind closed doors.

Here’s the issue: The Assembly’s powerful leader wants the cap to include a sunset provision, a date when it would have to be reviewed and either extended, changed or allowed to expire. The current bill doesn’t have specific sunset language and tax cap supporters like it that way. They don’t want it threatened by legislative gridlock or inaction every time it comes up for review.

Two days after the press conference that was staged as a victory lap for Gov.Andrew Cuomo and his biggest policy priority, one the proposal’s supporters warned that New Yorkers may be snared in a “bait and switch.”

Cuomo announced a three-way deal to cap property tax growth at 2 percent a year, or inflation, whichever is less. Beside him were Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, along with the minority party leaders and a throng of supportive business groups.

The result was front-page coverage that the deal was done in what one headline called a “home run” in the closing three weeks of the legislative session. For Cuomo and Skelos, the tax cap is a top campaign issue. Silver has agreed to it as long as it’s linked it to one of his top priorities, strengthening rent control for a million New York City renters.

Silver’s bill, released to lawmakers just hours before the press conference, is the basis of the tax cap agreement. The last lines of the 20-page bill say the tax cap would be in effect “only so long as” the New York City rent control laws, which have been extended repeatedly since 1946. The next extension is needed by June 15.

Skelos specifically said in a prepared statement after the murky press conference that the sunset provision isn’t part of the agreement announced Tuesday.

“There’s a long way to go before a final bill is passed,” Skelos said to two reporters in a hallway after the press conference.