Conservatives to Eliot:

Stop Steamrolling Taxpayers

Ft. Hamilton Station, NY – State Chairman Michael R. Long called Governor Spitzer’s proposed budget his personal steamroller designed to flatten New York taxpayers.

“To propose a budget that has a growth rate of 7.8% when inflation is at 2.6% is Eliot’s way of telling New Yorkers that he believes in big government programs and if we don’t, it really does not matter,” said Long.

Eliot Spitzer’s continues to spend our money at rates that cannot be sustained. If the Legislature adopts his budget without adding any spending…historically this does not happen…future budget shortfalls will reach $6.7 Billion by 2010. Budget shortfalls indicate the imbalance between revenues and expenditures…simply put…spending continues to be the problem.

He promised New Yorkers property tax relief, yet people who pay the highest property taxes in the country will get the smallest amount of relief. Many will believe that expanding the STAR program by up to 100% will give them relief, however, It does not require school districts to reduce their property tax levies—which increased at a somewhat accelerated pace during the period when STAR was originally phased in between 1998 and 2001. Without a cap on spending, which the Republican Senate proposed that local taxpayers could vote for, the STAR program shifts the tax burden, from homeowners paying local school property taxes to taxpayers statewide. Shifting taxes is not tax relief.

Governor Spitzer promised to strengthen the upstate economy, but his budget does not include any tax relief or assistance to help businesses grow and create new jobs. In fact, his proposal to close “revenue loopholes” will do more to stifle job creation in upstate as well as downstate.

Governor Spitzer promised New Yorkers that he would control spending; nothing in his budget that lives up to his promise. In fact, he even increased the size of the Executive Chamber Budget by $2.5 million and the Lt. Governor’s budget by just under $900,000. He promised taxpayers that on day one everything would change...what he didn’t tell us is that once elected he would steamroll the voters with his increased spending of their money.

“I hope that each New Yorker will contact Governor Spitzer and let him know that he was elected Governor on the strength of his words that he would control spending,” said Long. “Now that they know his first budget increases spending, they know they are being steamrolled by his excessive need to expand government by spending our money,” Long concluded.
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