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GOP state senators voted for Gov. Cuomo’s sweeping property-tax cap only because they knew it wouldn’t pass the Democratic-controlled Assembly, an associate of Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has admitted.
The blockbuster revelation by former Assembly Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jerry Kremer, a partner at Skelos’ law firm, reinforces the growing belief that the Nassau Republican isn’t serious about halting the runaway property taxes that cripple business and drive hundreds of thousands of residents from the state.
“They [Senate Republicans] knew the bill, as passed, wouldn’t be acceptable to the Assembly, so it was an easy position to take to send it over to them,” Kremer, who heads the lobbying arm of Long Island-based Ruskin Moscou Faltischek, told The Post.
“I think if the Assembly actually passed it, a lot of the guys on the Senate side would faint because I don’t believe they ever thought they’d do it. As you know, Albany is the place of many one-house bills, and I think their view of it was: Let the Assembly deal with it,” said Kremer, a Democrat who has launched a crusade against the tax cap.
Senate Republicans passed Cuomo’s property-tax cap earlier in the year, but although the governor and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) said some minor changes may be needed, Skelos has adamantly refused to negotiate.
Skelos led many insiders to believe he was really intent on killing a measure that is strongly opposed by many big-spending local governments and school districts, especially on Long Island.
“Kremer’s comments are proof of what we’ve suspected, that Skelos isn’t serious about a property-tax cap,” said a prominent official who backs Cuomo’s plan.
Meanwhile, Kremer had a Manhattan-based publicist hard at work last week soliciting media interviews in which she promised that Kremer would blast the tax cap as potentially “the mistake of the century.”