Although still considered something of an Albany backwater, the Assembly Real Property Taxation committee is taking ambitious steps into the territory of some of the more influential committees.
Despite its name, the Assembly committee has not had much influence on property taxes or funding the overall state budget. It generally focuses on technical or targeted legislation, explained committee chair Sandra Galef (D-Putnam/Westchester).
“I don’t think it has really ever entertained the issue about how we fund our schools, how we fund our government,” Galef said, reflecting on the committee. “I have just sort of pulled it in, because I think it is important, and I think it belongs in the real property committee. But other people could disagree.”
This year, Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) did what executives often do with hot-button issues like property taxes: he created a commission, charged with studying the state system in the hopes of developing a tax cap to tamp down growth.
Galef has held a handful of traveling hearings and lobbied to get legislation to her committee which addresses broad property tax issues, typically heard in Ways and Means or Education. Her committee stays focused on hundreds of highly specific bills, many for property tax exemptions, Galef said.
Galef leads one of the Assembly’s 37 standing committees. But the committee holds the distinction of having the highest ratio of women to men, with nine women and only one man, James Brennan (D-Brooklyn).
Galef became chair in February 2006 after Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) asked her to replace former Queens Assembly Member Brian McLaughlin, who announced in January 2006 that he was resigning. In October of that year, he was indicted on corruption charges.
Assembly Member Nancy Calhoun (R-Orange/Rockland), one of only two Republicans on the committee, is her party’s ranking member and the committee’s longest-serving legislator.
The committee is growing in influence as homeowners call for property tax changes, she said.
“When I first came on the committee in 1991, it was a committee no one wanted to be on,” she said. But now, she added, members want to influence the debate and “want to be on the committee that is holding hearings.”
She said Galef has instituted a number of changes, including limiting the time a religious institution or nonprofit could wait before filing for an exemption in property taxes to three years. Some have waited more than a decade, which she said was an abuse.
“Under the previous chairman there were no parameters,” she said. “You were giving these people a rebate that was coming from the current taxpayers.”
Approximately 125 of the 400 bills that have come to the committee this session are for such exemptions. Some 40 will be granted, Galef said.
A top issue for the committee is removing exemptions for new condominiums (outside New York City) that appear to be single-family houses but are assessed at a much lower rate.
“I am trying to look at equity and fairness in the taxes in the state,” she said.
Other proposals are specific to economic development projects in a single town, which have earned them the title of designer bills.
Assembly Member Aileen Gunther (D-Orange/Sullivan) said the suggestion she would like to see the committee press for in Albany is a change in how exempt properties are taxed. Local governments lose revenue when properties are removed from the tax rolls after being purchased by exempt religious or nonprofit organizations.
One regional difference in the committee is that the four New York City legislators look at school funding differently, because the schools are funded heavily by income taxes. Outside the city, there is much greater reliance on property taxes.
“The city does not have the same issues as we have, so we kind of get a divide,” said Gunther, who represents suburban communities.
Galef said some bills she wanted in her committee were sent to other committees. One way she is dealing with that is through hearings.
Frank Mauro, executive director of the nonpartisan Fiscal Policy Institute, said the committee was aggressively reaching out to New Yorkers through the diverse viewpoints in those hearings,
“She is a very engaged legislator who is digging into a lot of interesting and important issues,” he said.
Galef said she wants to get more into the school funding issues in her committee. But given the restraints of her power in the committee, she does not have the final word on that.
“I don’t direct where the bills go. I advocate and lobby, but they don't always come to my committee,” she said. “You have to deal with it.”