Residency Rule vs. Real Economic Development
Letter to the editor by Howie Hawkins
To the Editor:
Why is the working class always asked to pay in Syracuse?
A regressive, soak-the-worker structure of local taxes means working people pay more of their income in sales and property taxes.
In 2000, the lowest-income 20 percent of families paid 14 percent of their income in sales and property taxes. The middle 20 percent paid 9 percent. The top 5 percent paid only 5 percent. (Who Pays?, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, 2003).
Syracuse workers pay higher property tax rates, but their children receive about one-third less funding per student than in the suburbs.
Despite the higher property tax rates, the portion of those taxes that can be devoted to school funding is lower than the surrounding suburbs because over half of Syracuse property is tax exempt. Yet the city must provide police, fire, street repair, snow removal, and other services for these tax-exempt properties, where the majority of the over 40,000 commuters to the city work.
City tax breaks and subsidies flow to the wealthy.
The city gave out $2 billion in various subsidies to businesses from 1995 to 1999, according to Forbes. Nothing seems to have changed since, with the 30-year extension of the Carousel Malls property tax exemption leading the list of subsidies for business and condo developments.
This trickle-down approach to economic development give the rich corporate welfare and hope the benefits of resulting economic activity trickle down to the working class has not worked.
Among the central cities in Americas 100 metropolitan areas in 2005, Syracuse had the third highest overall poverty rate (31.3 percent) and the highest black poverty rate (42.5 percent). (US Census Bureau)
The residency rule hits (some) city workers, but not absentee-owned businesses.
The city put some of its workers under surveillance this year to see if they were violating the residency rule. Then it suddenly suspended eight workers one day, summoned them to a hearing the next, and fired them the third.
Enforcement like this makes Syracuse about as inviting a place to live and work as, well, that new policy of booting cars for three overdue parking tickets.
Proponents of the residency rule say it promotes economic development by making city workers pay property taxes here. But the residency rule only applies to 15 percent of the city workforce.
Eight workers out of some 5600 city and school workers are going to rebuild the citys economy by living here?
Let me suggest two better ways of promoting economic development and funding our city and schools.
A Residency Rule for Business Incentives: Instead of corporate welfare for absentee owners, the citys public investments in economic development should target community-owned enterprises that are anchored to the community by their ownership structures and the public gets its share of management and income rights like other investors.
These community-owned enterprises would include worker- and consumer-owned cooperatives, municipal enterprises (e.g., public power), owner-operated small businesses, and community-owned corporations where voting shares are restricted to residents (like the Green Bay Packers whose resident-owners keep that big NFL franchise in little Green Bay).
Progressive Tax Reform: Let city workers live where they want, but also make them pay income taxes to the city no matter where they choose to live.
A progressively graduated city income tax, including over 40,000 commuters who work here, would be a fairer, larger, and more stable revenue base for the city and the school district than the regressive property and sales taxes, which could be cut as the income tax goes into effect.
Howie Hawkins
303 Warner Ave.
Syracuse NY 13205
425-1019
Howie Hawkins is the Green Party's candidate for Councilor At-Large.