Andrew Cuomo stopped by The Post Wednesday, at just about the time Bill de Blasio was wrapping up a budget address he used to double down on his insistence that Albany allow him to raise taxes on the city’s rich to fund his pre-K.
The governor made two arguments against the mayor’s pitch. First, that it’s unnecessary, because he’s already come up with the money without raising taxes. Second — and far more intriguing — that the mayor’s bid runs counter to the argument for equity that liberal reformers have advanced for years. Which is that funding should be allocated on an equal, statewide basis, so that kids in rich cities don’t have an advantage over kids in poorer ones.
“Let’s discuss fairness,” Cuomo told us. “New York City has many millionaires and wants to tax the millionaires to pay for pre-K.” But, he went on, what about children in cities that don’t have all those millionaires? “What do you say to the 4-year-old in Buffalo?” he asked.
We’re not sure we buy the case against local funding of schools, much less that universal pre-K will in fact improve student outcomes. But there’s no disputing the governor’s point that de Blasio’s request that Albany allow him to take advantage of Gotham’s millionaires to ensure funding for his city runs contrary to the progressive wisdom on school funding.
The governor gives the mayor full marks for selling pre-K expansion to the public during his campaign. But he believes the mayor is making a mistake to regard this as a mandate to jack up taxes on the city’s rich to pay for it. A new Quinnipiac poll backs him up, showing both that pre-K is popular and that New York City residents support his no-tax approach to pre-K funding over de Blasio’s by 49 percent to 40 percent.
In short, our mayor isn’t the only Democrat who makes a case about pre-K funding based on attacking inequality. And the one sitting in the governor’s mansion seems to have the better of the argument.