How nice that our North Hempstead Town Councilwoman Lee Seeman greeted New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio during lunch at the Seven Seas Diner in Great Neck this past Memorial Day.
I have to ask if she took the time to represent the thousands of Town of North Hempstead residents who work in New York City and tell Mayor Di Blasio that her constituents are opposed to any reinpositon of the New York City non-resident commuter tax.
You can be sure Mayor Bill de Blasio with the support of city Comptroller Scott Stringer, city Public Advocate Letitia James along with virtually all other New York City Council, state Assembly and state Senate members from the Big Apple renew their annual call for reintroduction of a non-New York City resident commuter tax.
Mayor de Blasio and company need to find several billion dollars in new revenues over the next few years. These dollars are required to fund his very generous labor settlements recently provided.
Some see this deal as a political pay back to his union supporters who elected him. Many of the 300,000 New York City municipal employees had been working without contracts for years.
They asked for and received retroactive back wage increases which are worth up to $7 billion dollars over time.
Residents from Great Neck, New Hyde Park, Herricks, Williston Park, Albertson, Searington, Mineola, Garden City, Manhasset, Roslyn and other neighborhoods all over Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam and other suburban counties are a new potential revenue stream to help Mayor de Blasio and company pay for the costs.
He also has to find new revenue sources to fill a looming multi-billion dollar shortfall in next years municipal budget to cover other expenses beyond labor settlements.
Democratic state Assembly Speaker controls 100 votes out of the 150 member state Assembly. He starts off with 59 votes including his own out of 61 New York City- based members.
All he needs for passage is another 15 out of 41 other Democratic members of his caucus.
Will our own Great Neck state Assemblymember Michelle Schimel stand up to her benefactor state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver?
Will she publicly speak out and vote with us against this regressive tax?. Ditto for our own state Sen. Jack Martin.
This old recycled idea periodically proposed by many others missed the potential economic consequences after implementing.
In today’s global economy, boundaries which end at the city line between NYC and the surrounding suburbs and others mean very little. We are all neighbors and thankfully there has never been a Berlin Wall between us.
The United States is in economic competition against other nations. Within the USA, residents of the Northeastern states compete against other state coalitions based in the geographic South, Rocky Mountains, West and other regions. Our metropolitan New York area comprising New York City, Long Island, northeast New Jersey, Hudson Valley and parts of southwestern Connecticut are in competition against other metropolitan areas around the nation and world.
I work in New York City. My wife and I travel around the five boroughs enjoying shopping, dining, going to the movies, visiting museums and taking advantage of the diverse different neighborhoods.
Each weekday several hundred thousand Long Island and other suburban residents travel to jobs in NYC — the economic engine of our metropolitan region. Many others enjoy sporting events, the theater, museums, restaurants and shopping.
A growing number of NYC residents have become reverse commuters to jobs in Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties along with New Jersey and Connecticut.
Other NYC residents attend sporting events, shop, dine and visit other places on Long Island. It is naive to believe that NYC can survive economically in today’s ever changing technology and global economy without Long Island and the rest of Metropolitan New York.
The suburbs around the Big Apple are equally dependent on the success of NYC.
Residents of Long Island and NYC in the end have much in common.
We should work together as neighbors and not adversaries. Reintroduction of a commuter tax on one set of non-residents could trigger an economic tariff war among neighbors. With the financial crises on Wall Street followed by our economic recession several years ago, thousands of commuters residing outside of NYC lost their jobs. These jobs have never come back.
Between the downsizing of many Wall Street firms along with conversion of many offices and older buildings in the financial district into residential units, these loss of jobs have become permanent.
As a result, the reintroduction of any nonresident commuter tax will not bring in the same level of revenues as was the case during the 1990s when it was last in place. It could result in a retaliatory commuter tax by Nassau County, other impacted suburban counties or neighboring states on NYC residents.
At the end of the day, everyone could lose with implementation of any non-NYC resident commuter tax.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
