Comments on: Something for Everyone

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:21:10 +0000

So, if the STAR taxes are reduced to tax payers at the school district level, won’t the taxes be made up at the state level, IE: reduction in local property taxes = increase in state taxes ?

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 01:15:43 +0000

The healthcare proposal is going to anger a lot of people in the state. We have a hard enough time keeping medical professionals in Rochester. What will this do to the elderly in the community ? What does this say about Rochester’s health care ? Rochester’s health care used to be top rated a dozen years ago. How do we keep good physicians, lower costs and keep the community happy and healthy ?

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 01:08:11 +0000

I think your observation and support of Spitzer’s shortsighted views of Healthcare and Graduate Medical Education is wrong. Is there some waste in the system and is the state paying for phantom residents that don’t exist…don’t count on it and if there is, it’s minor. The benefits that NY gets from those graduates are significant. Upstate NY, especially Rochester and Buffalo, is approaching a physician crisis. Many specialty positions are unfilled,recruitment of primary doctors is difficult. Rochester lost nearly 20% of it’s doctors in the last decade. The rate of physician retirements in the next decade is substantial. Fortunately for Rochester, some 40% of doctors who are residents at the city hospital Medical Education Programs stay in Rochester. The GME programs are the primary source of Doctors for the Rochester area. Virtually no doctors, unless they have a Rochester connection, move to Rochester. They can go to any other part of the country and work less, have a higher income, get hassled less by a HMO and be in a better climate. The hospitals in Rochester spend large amounts of their resources to recruit and employ doctors because otherwise none would stay. At the same time the hospitals in Rochester, some of the most efficient and highest quality in the State and nation, routinely operate above 100% occupancy with aging infrastructures because they don’t generate sufficient resouces to do so. Like doctors,they also are paid well below what other hospitals across the country are paid. Over the last 10 years 2 hospitals in Rochester have closed. Elliot Spitzer needs to methodically plan his reform for HealthCare as well as other aspects of the state and approach it rationally. Actually, the Berger Commission did that, looks like Spitzer forgot it. The way he’s doing it will turn people off quickly when they realize he’s just another guy with a prosecutor mentality that believes everyone is a criminal and out to do the wrong thing. Rochester healthcare has real problems today yet THEY take care of patients and do it exceptionally well. You don’t want to be in a Rochester Hospital or Nursing Home 5 years from now if Spitzer does what he’s threatening to do. And you certainly hope you don’t need a doctor.

By: Scott

Scott — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:12:43 +0000

Haha! As a former reporter, I can relate to your rule of sources. That’s when you know you’re hitting a nerve.

Spitzer is sure hitting a nerve, and I think it’s a good thing on balance. It’s funny to me that he’s sounding more like a conservative than a New York liberal. He wants funding tied to school performance and credits for parents who send kids to private schools. Sound familiar?

My current rule of thumb is that anything that makes NYSUT mad is good for the state. I’ll be interested to see if Spitzer can keep this up in the face of opposition.

By: Bill Mullen

Bill Mullen — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:30:03 +0000

The ‘adjustments’ to the STAR program do not steer ” far more of the benefit to middle-income taxpayers.”

In Westchester County, and the other counties surrounding NYC, the cost of living, as well as income is much higher.

This is self evident, in that everyone in NYS does not live here. A $170,000 house in Syracuse costs $600,000. here. Same house, similar neighborhood, different region. If you check any of the ‘executive management relocation’ websites, you will find that it is 40% cheaper to live in most of NYS than it is in the non-NYC downstate area.

In other words, middle income in Wellsville of $60,000 is comperable to middle income in New Rochelle of $100,000.

That said, any income-driven change to the STAR program which does not adjust for the regional-cost-of-living (RCOLA) is simply a rip off of downstate middle-income taxpayers, and another handout to upstate New Yorkers.