Sheldon Silver (Shannon DeCelle)
While a major confrontation between soon- to-be-Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver over a property-tax cap is virtually certain, an even more serious and defining battle is being privately predicted, The Post has learned.
That battle will be over the soon-to-sunset, Silver-backed $4 billion-plus “millionaire” tax, which, while supposedly hitting those earning over $1 million a year, actually imposes higher taxes on some making $200,000.
Cuomo won a landslide victory last month running on a fiscally conservative platform that unequivocally promised no tax increases while fellow liberal Democrat Silver has long supported higher taxes and increased social spending.
The new tax on high earners was approved by the Legislature and Gov. Paterson in 2009, but it was OK’d for only three years, meaning it goes out of existence at the end of the 2011 calendar year.
Since the state’s fiscal year runs April 1 to March 31, the end of the millionaire’s tax will hit during the fiscal year’s fourth quarter, denying the state — which faces a $10 billion deficit in the new fiscal year — an estimated $1 billion in revenues.
And for Cuomo’s second fiscal year, which begins April 1, 2012, and includes another massive projected deficit, the tax would deny the state the full $4 billion.
Silver refused to say flatly if he favored allowing the tax to die, although he suggested he might have to because Cuomo and the likely new Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos (R-Nassau), both favor the expiration.
“If our two partners don’t agree with us, it doesn’t matter what we think,” said Silver.
But a senior state Democrat predicted Silver would come under “enormous pressure” to hold up passage of Cuomo’s first proposed budget from many of his most important political allies including public-employee unions desperate to limit the extent of budget cuts.
“This is going to be the big battle, bigger than the property-tax cap and what Shelly does with it is anybody’s guess,” he said.
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There’s one last chance at the Court of Appeals today for Senate Democrats to prevent the Republicans from holding a bare, 32-30, majority, although Democrats privately concede they have little chance of success.
Democrats will ask the state’s highest court to reverse two lower-court rulings and order a lengthy hand recount of some 85,000 paper ballots that were fed into new optical scanning voting machines in the contest between incumbent Nassau Sen. Craig Johnson, a Democrat, and Mineola Mayor Jack Martins, the GOP challenger, who has been officially certified as having won by 451 votes.
If the court orders a hand recount and if Johnson ultimately turns out to be the winner, Democrats and Republicans would be split at a paralyzing 31 votes each.