Tension in New York over Taxes
by Erika Rosenberg

What do you think is the greatest issue facing New York that a governor could do something about?

That’s the question that we at the Center for Governmental Research posed to 2,492 New Yorkers through a telephone poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion.

Taxes topped the list, but not in the way you might expect. One clear and surprising finding of the poll is that New Yorkers are more concerned about how tax money is spent than how much they have to pay in taxes.

We wanted to find out what voter priorities are heading into this fall’s critical election for governor. New York will elect its first new governor in 12 years at a time when the state’s economy is struggling, the population is stagnating as some residents leave New York for better opportunities elsewhere and the government often comes under heavy criticism for not being responsive enough to the state’s problems and residents’ concerns.

Residents told us they were most concerned about taxes (20 percent), education (19 percent) and jobs (10 percent). Issues like health care, crime and housing were also mentioned, but by fewer people.

Here, and in many other parts of the poll, we see that New Yorkers seem to be torn between the goals of reducing the tax burden and providing quality programs on the issues that matter most, like education.

When we asked what should be the top priority of the next state budget, 39 percent of New Yorkers said cutting taxes, 38 percent said maintaining programs and 23 percent said reducing the state’s debt.

Sixty percent of residents say reducing state taxes is always or often a good idea, but 39 percent say it is seldom or never a good idea.

But New Yorkers are also worried about the impact of tax cuts. We asked several questions about the possible ramifications of tax cuts, and most residents said they were concerned that cutting state taxes would cause cuts in programs and services (61 percent), increase local taxes (60 percent) and increase the state’s debt (55 percent).

In some parts of the poll, it’s obvious that the statewide split in opinion on taxes is coming from the great Upstate-Downstate divide. For example, on the “greatest issue a governor could do something about” question, just 6 percent of New York City residents answered taxes. Yet that was the most common answer in every other region of the state that we polled. (We did not do a separate tally of North Country residents, but we did compile regional results for Central New York, Finger Lakes, Lower and Upper Hudson Valley areas, Long Island, NYC and Western New York, which we will release in more detail in coming weeks.)

However, it’s not just the Downstate folks who are concerned about the impact of state tax cuts. Strong majorities (as in two-thirds or more) in many other regions are worried about hiking local taxes, cutting programs and piling on debt as well.

And here’s a really interesting result from the poll. We asked people whether they were more concerned about how much they pay in taxes, or how government spends their money. Sixty-eight percent said it’s the how, not the how much, that really irks them. Just 31 percent said it’s how much they pay.

This, too, was not a New York City phenomenon. In the Finger Lakes, 73 percent picked how over how much, 68 percent on Long Island and 73 percent in Western New York.

We can’t say with certainty what this all means without more research, which we plan to do. We don’t know, for example, whether people think government is corrupt when it comes to spending tax money, or just wasteful.

But we think as least part of the story is this: People want value for their tax dollar. They care about programs, especially education. This isn’t Texas, where the electorate will accept massive cuts in services. Yet, voters can’t and don’t want to absorb continued tax hikes either.

This poll is the beginning of CGR’s New York Matters project, which is our effort to bring attention to the critical issues facing New York during this gubernatorial campaign. We hope this survey and the research that follows it will serve as the basis for some enlightening debate among residents and the candidates themselves. We hope to see the candidates for New York’s top office respond to the issues that voters said they care about most, and taxes would be an excellent place to start.

Poll information is available at New York Matters (www.newyorkmatters.org).

Rosenberg is a research associate with the Center for Governmental Research – www.cgr.org.