By Dan Murphy
The news earlier this month the Gov. Andrew Cuomo will be moving out of Westchester gives us the chance the thank him for his lasting legacy, and major accomplishment for homeowners who live here in the highest-taxed county in the U.S. – the state-mandated property tax cap.
Cuomo, who has lived in New Castle, in a six-bedroom home owned by his partner, author and Food TV Network star Sandra Lee for more than a decade, said the reason for the sale is that his three daughters are either at college or living on their own. Lee will benefit from the sale, with a listing price of $2.3 million, after purchasing it in 2008 for $1.2 million.
The governor lived in Bedford for 10 years before moving to New Castle, and the fact that he lived in our county was good for all our residents. “Having a sitting governor live in Westchester can only help its residents and elected officials in Albany,” said one county republican. “He knows firsthand what the issues and financial implications are because he lives there.”
While Cuomo did not own the New Castle home with Lee, he shared the expenses, which included a $38,000 property tax bill. While those of us who have a modest home in Westchester, with property taxes between $12,000 and $15,000, the idea of paying $3,000 per month in property taxes in almost unfathomable.
That is why Cuomo should be thanked, as he departs our county, for his lasting legacy that provided some of us with the hope that we can live in our homes for decades to come.
The property tax cap passed in 2011, and a simple analogy that I like to use when I have discussions with friends who don’t support the tax cap – which puts a 2 percent limit on how much local and county governments, and school districts can increase taxes every year – is: If you total up the tax increases from 2000 to 2010, and compare that increase (more than 60 percent) to the tax increases from 2011 to 2019 (less than 20 percent), homeowners have saved thousands of dollars because of the property tax cap.
The motivation for the tax cap came from Cuomo – and certainly not from his fellow democrats in Albany, and also not from republicans in Albany. Perhaps the motivation for the tax cap came from the governor looking at his property tax bill in either his former Bedford home or his current New Castle home. Whatever the motivation, it worked. Thanks, governor!
Remember that Westchester had another resident serve as governor in Albany; his name was George Pataki. But Pataki never passed a property tax cap. In fact, property taxes almost doubled in his 12 years as governor. The genius of Cuomo’s tax cap is that it affected all of our property taxes – local, county and schools.
And if we examine of all the more than 40 recent school district budgets in Westchester, all of them proposed budgets within the property tax cap and all of them passed. So for those few elected officials in Westchester who believed the tax cap would never work, you were wrong.
Now there are proposals in Albany to change and modify the STAR property tax rebate program, which helps seniors stay in their homes and was passed during Pataki’s time in Albany. More on that next week.
With Cuomo and Lee departing Westchester, and the Town of New Castle, former President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Sen. and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will continue to serve as Westchester’s most famous political couple.
The Clintons marched with Cuomo in the New Castle Memorial Day Parade on May 27.
