News Release

Testimony of David A. Little, Esq., Director of Governmental Relations 
Governor’s Albany Regional Hearing on Mid-Year Tax Cuts
October 21, 2009

Legislative Office Building, Hearing Room B
Albany, New York
Time: 2:30 p.m.

Good Afternoon. Chairman Farrell and members of the committee, I am David Little, Director of Governmental Relations for the New York State School Boards Association and I am grateful for the opportunity to relay the impact of the governor's proposal to cut state aid to education by $686 million in the current state and school fiscal year.

One of the benefits of the collective length of service of our state representatives is that many have first hand knowledge of the programmatic harm inflicted on schools, the fiscal injury inflicted on local taxpayers and the political implications reflected back on legislators of the mid year aid cuts undertaken nearly 20 years ago. For local taxpayers, the decision to cut aid in the midst of a school year set the stage for a generation of steadily increasing local property taxes. For legislators, it set the stage for an increasingly disenchanted electorate. But for public education, it created a systemic inability to offer the full range of programs and services required to prepare students for the demands of the marketplace. It inhibited our state's ability to attract business. It took years for schools to recover, but for individual students who lacked the ability to return to courses and subject matter withdrawn from their education, it permanently denied them the well rounded education both they and our state require. It helped lead to a generation of remedial work, a lack of college readiness and a dramatic gap in student achievement between school districts of independent means that were able to weather the cuts with increased local resources and those that were forced to address the reductions by removing valuable programs and services from the curriculum.

As we face the current economic crisis it is abundantly clear that the governor, on the advice and counsel of the Division of the Budget, has inaccurately determined that school districts have the ability to weather these proposed aid cuts by virtue of abundant funds held in reserve by individual school districts. These funds are encumbered for specific purposes and by eliminating restrictions placed on their use, schools would be able to supplant promised state aid with reserve funds and thus preserve programs and services. The assumption is fundamentally flawed. First, it ignores the fact that much of the funding in these reserve accounts is not state money. To the extent that the state pays a percentage of the operating costs for school districts, the remaining percentage in these reserve accounts is local money. As a result, the state would be encumbering local resources for a state purpose. Much like the recent decision to force school district local taxpayers to pay for the state funding of the Metropolitan Transit Authority, the governor's proposal misappropriates local funds and the decision making authority of locally elected community representatives away from local spending priorities and toward minimal state mandated programs and services. The result will be the preservation of state mandates at the expense of non mandated programs and services that are local priorities, but which by necessity must give way to state and federally required ones. Simply put, the answer to the question of what will happen if the governor's proposal goes through is that local school districts will use their reserves, placing them completely at the mercy of certain aid cuts for next year, increasing local property taxes when local residents have become accustomed to the heroic efforts made by local school officials in recent years to keep tax increases below the rate of state, county, town and village taxes and indeed, at below the level of those included in proposals to cap local taxes. Next year's school budgets will be defeated by local taxpayers. Non mandated programs and services will be cut. Which ones? Those that are not required, but which make school bearable for most students: Music, art, sports, photography, foreign language, extra-curricular activities School will be narrowed down to those subjects that are tested. Subject matter will be narrowed down to those areas that are tested. The art of teaching will be narrowed down to simple dissemination of information necessary to receive a passing score on a standardized examination. The achievement gap interestingly will close because everyone will be held only to a standard of minimum mediocrity. The future of New York will be lost as our students are no more prepared to contribute to the needs of their prospective employers than those in any other state. Our attractiveness will suffer and ultimately, we will lose any right to the title of the Empire State.

That this would happen given our alternatives is unthinkable. Cut $686 million from public education when the needed funds sit in the state's own rainy day fund? Unthinkable.

Cut $686 million from needed programs and services and lay off the people who provide them when we continue to knowingly hold onto federal stimulus funds for the express purpose of addressing cash flow issues? Unconscionable.

Break the promise of the CFE court settlement, not merely by delaying implementation, but by reneging on payments already set in law? Unimaginable.

Withhold twice the amount so sought after in federal Race to the Top funding while we continue to be the only state in the union to needlessly delay school construction projects, subject students and staff to unsafe conditions and pay out hundreds of millions of unearned tax dollars to construction companies through the outmoded and harmful Wicks Law? Irrational.

Abrogate the state's responsibility for school funding by confiscating local tax dollars in local reserve funds, based on an inaccurate and overstated guess by the state comptroller and jeopardize federal stimulus funds by forcing the massive layoffs they were intended to prevent? Illegitimate.
Fail to honor promised reimbursement for the MTA payroll tax? Dishonorable.
There is no need to remind our leaders of the political ramifications of this proposal: Massive school budget failure, drastic cuts to needed and expected programs and services, broad community discontent - all based on cuts that not only could not have been anticipated but for which schools have no legal recourse, all playing out immediately prior to state elections; attempting to explain to a disgruntled public why their money was being confiscated when the governor wasn't willing to use the state's own rainy day fund to weather this mid year storm; trying to justify to children who will never regain lost skills and subject matter how leaders could in good conscience continue unfunded and onerous state mandates and prevent schools from adjusting their resources to meet this unusual threat to their mission;

Ladies and gentlemen, you have a unique responsibility and a singular opportunity in addressing this crisis. You can position our schools for the new reality of change. As school districts face decreased enrollment, a stagnant tax base, flat aid revenue, all the while attempting to meet the increased educational expectations of the public, federal and state governments to meet the challenges of a more demanding international marketplace, you alone have the ability to remove barriers to efficiency, create innovative and effective methods of providing educational services, expand the ability of BOCES, school districts and other local municipalities to share and combine needed functions; only you can allow our schools to become the vehicle for improvement that can save the State of New York's pre-imminent position as the leader in providing business with an educated and intellectually adaptable workforce. In short, choose now the future you would have for New York State. When the body is in crisis, it will divert all energy to the vital organs in an attempt to remain alive. It must instinctively choose its most critically important functions and jettison others that are also important but do not support the continuation of life as we know it. You must now perform that function for our state.

Do what you must to preserve public education and in so doing, preserve the great State of New York. Thank you for this opportunity to address you today.

Respectfully submitted,
DAVID A. LITTLE, Esq.

Director of Governmental Relations
New York State School Boards Association