Opinion

‘Game-changer’

A meaningful property-tax cap for New York?

That’s what Gov. Cuomo, along with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and Assembly Speaker Shelly Silver, announced yesterday — and it’s a wonder the earth didn’t open and swallow the Capitol whole.

Cuomo termed the plan a “game-changer” — and, indeed, it could be just that: New York’s property levies are among the nation’s most onerous; they’re driving families out of their homes, and they are a drag on economic growth from Montauk to Buffalo.

But Albany is Albany, where nothing is done until it’s done — and all parties cautioned yesterday that “technical” issues could hold things up.

Silver, for instance, says he won’t allow the cap to pass without a deal extending rent regulation in New York City.

“These two [issues] are inextricably linked,” he warned.

And while Skelos passed a version of a cap months ago, he has yet to show a real appetite for reform.

The fact is, if Cuomo hadn’t put a rhetorical gun to their heads, neither Silver nor Skelos would’ve signed on to a genuine cap. And they’d almost certainly deep-six yesterday’s deal if they thought they could get away with it.

That’s because the public-employee unions that feed so richly off tax dollars are deathly opposed to a cap — and they’ve already opened fire.

“New York would be devastated by the toughest cap in the nation,” said teachers union fatcat Dick Iannuzzi, even stooping to play the race card. “This strikes at the heart of the educational needs of the most vulnerable students, especially children of color and children who live in poverty.”

The cap would be closely patterned on Cuomo’s original bill, which limits annual hikes to 2 percent or the rate of inflation, whichever is lower.

The deal includes a limited carve-out to cover pension payments for public employees. And the cap “sunsets” if rent laws ever expire (which they never do.)

Is this perfect? Of course, not.

If Albany wanted perfect, lawmakers would be talking about a floor on cuts in taxes — not a ceiling on hikes.

But it’s reasonable: Cuomo says even with the pension carve-outs, property taxes are likely to rise by less than 3 percent — and in a state where yearly 6 and 7 percent increases are routine, that’s close to revolutionary.

Meanwhile, towns and school districts have a fair point about how a cap would crimp their ability to pay for legitimate services, like education.

But the solution is not a watering down of the cap; it’s passage of corresponding relief from oppressive state mandates, which drive local costs through the roof.

Once a tax cap is passed, districts should band together to push Albany to roll back those mandates; indeed, a cap itself will add pressure for such relief.

And while it’s important that Cuomo guard against poison pills being slipped into the final bill, it is critical that action be taken straight away — before the special-interest termites bore into the deal and collapse it from within.

Those interests got hammered by Cuomo’s first budget; now they stand to absorb another drubbing.

But while they won’t take it without a fight — taxpayers, and New York’s anemic economy, be damned — Cuomo has them down.

God bless him for that.

Now he needs to keep them there.