School districts across New York state are cranking up their whine machines.
They’re upset that Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature had the gall two years ago to insist on a little fiscal prudence — in the form of a property-tax cap.
What’s upsetting them most is that the tax cap seems to be working: Some 99 percent of the districts that stayed within the cap saw voters approve their budgets in May; very few districts tried to bust it.
Now we have sky-is-falling verbiage from the New York State Association of School Business Officials — i.e., the school-district bean-counters — that many districts will go bankrupt within a few years because the tax cap and other clamps on government spending have forced them to tighten their belts and, in some cases, use their rainy day funds.
Chicken Little, call your school board.
The fact is, most school districts are run by elected boards and their appointed superintendents and bureaucrats. They routinely hand fat contracts to teachers unions in good times and then recoil in horror at the notion of closing the cash register in tough times.
Now that property taxpayers finally have said, “Enough already,” districts are struggling with the new reality and are looking for a scapegoat. They should stop.
It’s self-evidently true that districts could use more freedom from special-interest-driven mandates from Albany — especially the so-called Triborough Amendment, an albatross that gives unions far too much leverage in negotiating contracts.
If Gov. Cuomo wants to be the taxpayers’ lobbyist as well as the students’, reducing these mandates should be Recommendation No. 1 from his high-powered education commission.
But the districts have to step up and fight the fight, too.
If the last two years in New York have taught any worthwhile lesson, it’s that taxpayers are sick of picking up the tab for government programs that aren’t working.
They like their schools — but even that has a limit.
School districts should stop whining about the tax cap, live within their means — and steal a page from the Cuomo playbook: Take their battle to the public.
Albany could do its part by relieving districts from Triborough and other costly mandates.