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With the Wall Street protest just blocks away, minority lawmakers and union leaders rallied at City Hall yesterday to step up their call for a New York “millionaires tax” — with a transit-union president vowing he won’t accept wage freezes if Gov. Cuomo won’t accept the tax hike.
But Cuomo and state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos are standing firm in their opposition, saying higher taxes on the rich would drive investment, jobs and businesses to other states.
Skelos (R-LI) even took a swipe at actor and liberal sympathizer Alec Baldwin, who’s been spotted recently at the Occupy Wall Street protests.
“We can’t be influenced by the Alec Baldwins of the world that are just buying a $17 million condo in Greenwich Village — and he’s going to tell us that we should tax everybody else,” Skelos said on the Capitol Pressroom upstate radio show yesterday.
Skelos’ comment came as dozens of Democratic city and state legislators joined Transport Workers Union Local 100 President John Samuelsen and other labor leaders to demand that Cuomo extend the millionaires tax rather than allow it to expire as scheduled on Dec. 31.
“To expect working families and public-sector workers across New York state to suffer because you want to give millionaires a tax break — it’s not happening,” said Samuelsen, whose union’s contract is up at the end of the year, in declaring he would not accept the three-year wage freeze other public unions have this year agreed to if the governor does not continue the millionaires tax.
Supporters of a state tax hike, who have been calling for the levy since Cuomo took office on Jan. 1, say it’s needed to help protect funding for education, health care, transportation and other services.
“Today, more than ever, we should not hesitate to ask those who’ve gotten the most from New York state to give a little back when times get tough,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn (D-Manhattan), a likely 2013 mayoral candidate, said in a statement.
Proponents of the tax claim there’s new momentum behind them.
The Working Families Party, which had Democrat Cuomo on its ballot line in last year’s race for governor, launched a petition drive to keep the state’s millionaires tax alive.
Cuomo and Skelos noted that the next state budget already has 4 percent increases in education and health-care spending built in — following deep cuts in both areas this year.
Cuomo has said that despite a $2.4 billion projected deficit for 2012-13, he intends to stick with an $800 million increase in school aid planned for next year as part of a two-year appropriation.