Assembly stands by desire to expand millionaires tax

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said Wednesday that the governor’s proposal to extend an income tax on high-wealth earners is a decent staring point, but Assembly Democrats will continue to seek an expansion of that tax.

“We still feel we want to go beyond that,” Heastie said. “… (In) the governor’s budget we don’t feel is, at least preliminarily, there’s not enough money in for education. We still believe there’s some back money that should be put toward education. So just the extension of the millionaires tax won’t satisfy the conference’s needs to provide more education.”

Heastie is referring to Campaign for Fiscal Equity, or CFE, money that was supposed to be phased-in between 2007 and 2011 but was gummed up by the financial crisis.

Cuomo’s budget includes a three-year extension of the millionaires tax. His office projects that if the tax were to expire, the state would lose out on $683 million in the coming fiscal year and $3.4 billion in 2019.

Read more: http://blog.timesunion.com/capitol/archives/271342/assembly-stands-by-desire-for-expanding-millionaires-tax/