“No taxes for you!”
This was the message Andrew Cuomo delivered to Bill de Blasio via his just-released budget. The governor announced the state will pay $1.5 billion over five years to fund universal pre-K. As a result, the plan pointedly will not include the feature dearest to de Blasio’s heart: a tax increase for city residents making $500,000 or more.
In another pointed slap at de Blasio, Cuomo took the advice of his education commission to declare that “charter schools will be eligible for pre-K funding.” Right now, charters are forbidden by law from providing pre-K, and de Blasio is threatening to make it more difficult for these public schools by charging them rent.
This round goes to Gov. Cuomo.
That’s ironic, because just the other day the governor was on radio describing Republicans as a party in “schism,” riven by battles between its moderates and its extremists. But his own budget statement tells us that in New York this same battle is being waged between the state’s two most prominent Democratic figures — a mayor who views himself as a national voice for progressivism and a governor bent on burnishing his centrist credentials.
Officially, de Blasio remains undaunted, vowing to fulfill the mandate he says he’s been given to jack up taxes on the city’s rich.
His problem is twofold: First, the mayor needs Albany’s approval. Second, by coming up with the funding for pre-K, the governor has taken away the excuse (the children!) the mayor was using for his tax hike.
In short, de Blasio’s ideological obsession with raising taxes on the rich is colliding with the economic realities of New York and the political preferences of the state’s Democratic governor, who doesn’t want to be seen raising taxes during his re-election year.
Sorry, Bill, but based on the governor’s budget, it looks like you have no place in Andrew Cuomo’s New York. You’re just too extreme.