{"id":5198,"date":"2011-12-13T10:05:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T15:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5198"},"modified":"2011-12-15T08:49:57","modified_gmt":"2011-12-15T13:49:57","slug":"why-did-ny-republicans-sell-out-the-states-millionaires-theyre-not-from-around-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/12\/13\/why-did-ny-republicans-sell-out-the-states-millionaires-theyre-not-from-around-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Why did NY Republicans sell out the state’s millionaires? They’re not from around here."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week’s landmark income tax reform deal locked in higher tax rates for high-wage New Yorkers and the deal was embraced by many Republican leaders who are generally low-tax advocates.<\/p>\n

Nassau County state Senator Dean Skelos — who leads the GOP majority — shrugged off concerns about locking in higher tax rates for the wealthy, pointing out that the deal included a tax cut for the middle class.<\/p>\n

That view was echoed by state Senator Betty Little from Queensbury, the Republican who represents much of the North Country.<\/p>\n

The decision by Republicans to side with Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo on a tax increase has drawn fire from some conservatives, but here’s one political reason the move might make sense politically:<\/p>\n

Republican districts just don’t boast that many millionaires.<\/p>\n

According to a probe of tax returns (which you can see in full here<\/a>) conducted by a labor group at the City University of New York,83% of the state’s citizens who earn a million dollars a year or more live in Manhattan, on Long Island, or in Westchester and Putnam Counties.<\/p>\n

Nearly half of the state’s million-dollar-a-year club lives in Manhattan alone.<\/p>\n

Those regions have emerged as largely Democratic strongholds, though Putnam County is now represented by a Republican lawmakers.<\/p>\n

By comparison, only .05% of the state’s wealthiest earners\u00a0 live here in the North Country, 111 of them in total according to 2008 returns.\u00a0 Fewer than 2% of North Country residents even earn $200,000 a year.<\/p>\n

So while the GOP may have an ideological lean away from higher taxes, the fact is that few of their constituents will be affected adversely by this tax deal.<\/p>\n

This dynamic may also be reflected in the Republican push to shift far more state government costs — particularly for costly Medicaid programs — onto income tax payers and away from property tax payers.<\/p>\n

If successful, that effort would almost certainly mean even higher income taxes, and it would likely mean even more North Country programs being paid for by taxpayers downstate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week’s landmark income tax reform deal locked in higher tax rates for high-wage New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[10,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5199,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5198\/revisions\/5199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}