Finger pointing on property tax reform

Mayor Bill de Blasio traveled to Albany on Tuesday, intent on fighting back against cuts to Medicaid and CUNY, lobbying for support for his affordable housing program and pushing for an extension of mayoral control. Instead, the mayor was subjected to a four-hour-plus interrogation on property taxes that doubled as convenient political grandstanding.

Let’s get this out of the way: Anybody who thinks that this wasn’t a coordinated effort between Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Senate Republicans and the Independent Democratic Conference to put de Blasio through the wringer in a highly public setting is kidding themselves. But that doesn’t mean New York City’s property tax system is not in need of serious examination.

I remember sitting in the Blue Room at City Hall in April 2014 when de Blasio introduced his newly appointed Finance Commissioner, Jacques Jiha. At the time, de Blasio made the case that Jiha was the perfect point person to take a hard look at the inequities in our property tax system. Two weeks later, City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito proposed the creation of a property tax commission to address those inequities.

Of course, that commission went nowhere, partly because of de Blasio and the Council’s apparent reluctance to even study what is a very complex issue, politically and logistically. Jiha, meanwhile, has been M.I.A. on the property tax issue since his appointment.

The property tax disparities are real and undisputed, and the subject of a class action lawsuit the de Blasio administration is fighting. That lawsuit showed that apartment buildings account for less than a quarter of total market value, but pay 37 percent of all property taxes, even more when condo and co-op abatements are factored in. Meanwhile, homeowners account for nearly half of the market share, but pay a mere 15.5 percent of property taxes. The fact that many apartment renters are black, Latino and Asian, while many homeowners are white, makes the issue all the more problematic.

But while the mayor and speaker should certainly be held accountable for pushing property tax reform to the back burner, the state is solely responsible for addressing the disparities in the property tax system, making their bluster in Tuesday’s hearing all the more perplexing.

The property tax cap for New York City that the state Senate is proposing amounts to nothing more than window dressing. It robs the city of much-needed revenue that helps keep the state’s economy humming, and ignores the issue of the convoluted criteria of how city properties are assessed and categorized.

Perhaps Cuomo should assemble a real property tax commission, with representatives from the governor’s office, City Hall, the Legislature and City Council, as well as a variety of fiscal experts to put real reforms and ideas on the table. The results would certainly be more substantive than scoring cheap political points during a budget hearing.