US News

FIELDS: BRING BACK SURTAX TO SAVE SCHOOLS

Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields yesterday suggested reinstating the 12.5 percent surcharge on the city’s personal-income tax to produce an extra $800 million a year for schools.

The tax, which helped fund the successful “Safe Streets, Safe City” initiative begun during the Dinkins administration, was allowed to die two years ago.

But Fields, in her annual “state of the borough” address at City Hall, said the additional money would “go a long way to give our schools, and our children, the resources they need.

“So I’m willing to take the chance that like-minded New Yorkers will support spending what amounts to less than a dollar a day to do more for our children,” she said.

Fields said she knew she was treading on dangerous political territory, telling her audience she was “swimming upstream in a river of tax cuts.”

Mayor Giuliani, who initiated some of those cuts, was quick to shoot down Fields’ idea.

He said if he embraced every spending proposal that came his way, the city would find itself with a “double or quadruple” tax rate.

But some of Giuliani’s possible successors, who are hoping to win Fields’ endorsement, didn’t rule out the tax increase.

Comptroller Alan Hevesi complimented her for her “commitment” to schools and again urged Gov. Pataki to provide the city with a fair share of education aid.

At the same time, Hevesi said that, while he isn’t prepared to raise taxes for education “today, I wouldn’t take the education tax idea off the table either.”

Public Advocate Mark Green said his priority is to fix schools without increasing taxes by “one penny.” He, too, however, said he wouldn’t dismiss Fields’ proposal “without looking at the details.”