Residential property valuations bear no relationship to a homeowner’s ability to pay, and that is why reliance upon income taxes, distributed throughout the state and not parceled off by disequitable allocation by school districts, is the only way to proceed in funding what I will casually call the basic education. After state income taxes pay for the essentials, then use property taxes to fund the less necessary parts, or even the frills, that school district voters might want.

But that is only the revenue side.

We desperately need changes on the expense side, and we can no longer afford to treat all expenses, including those for each district’s personnel compensation and benefits, as sacred cows. This shameful canard of “oh, but it’s for the kids” has got to end.

While visiting a board of education meeting in a neighboring school district, which I do with many neighboring districts as a reality check in assessing my own school district, I heard one great comment from one of their residents at budget time: “I hear you (he was addressing the administration and the board) talking about sacrifices by the residents, and sacrifices by the kids, but nobody is talking about sacrifices by the teachers.”

What precious wisdom, that was, from that longtime resident of that district.

Until we get serious about making this an evenhanded process, where all parties sacrifice, we are going to face an ever-growing albatross that will ultimately sink everyone in New York.

The Senate proposal, as disingenuous as it may have been, could hold some promise for a better structure for all citizens of New York, so that people are no longer driven out of their homes, which escalating school taxes makes increasingly likely.

If most municipalities opted in then we would be moving the school tax burden from local property taxes to state taxes (presumably mostly income taxes), then the burden of paying for our schools would fall more equitably around the state (NYS income taxes are slightly more progressive than property taxes).

This is a fundamentally liberal/progressive structural change.

So, what’s going on here? Why would Bruno get on board with that? What’s the hitch?

Does Bruno think that, once the state has control of school taxes, the legislature can start to dismantle the public school system? That would be the page from the conservative playbook although Bruno doesn’t come off as a conservative ideologue. Moreover, it doesn’t look like Bruno hold on power is that strong (two seats switch in the Senate and he’s just another Senator) or that the state is going to move in a direction of dismantling public schools.

We already know precious little about what goes on in Albany. Indeed, the unelected Commissioner of Schools sits in Albany and is more directly responsible for taxation through mandate than most citizens of this state are aware. To then say that we’ll go ahead and let our school taxation get determined within the black hole that is Albany is just lunacy.

I’d rather gripe about taxes directly to the people taxing me in a public hearing in my town than be forced to complain fruitlessly on some AM radio talk show because the Albany freight train is now in charge of taxing me.

Besides which, this is political folly from the start. I’m all for funding parity between schools, but we already do not have that in terms of Albany money, so I don’t hold much hope for that situation getting any better once the state pays for ALL our education needs. And on the other side of the coin, do you really think that people spend all that money to raise a family in Brighton so they can get the same schools as everyone else has? Not bloody likely. They’ll be as resistant to their tax money paying for poor districts as those of us interested in regional sovereignty are to it. This was just another stunt of the Three Men in a Room Show, amounting to nothing more.