(Photo via the Governor's Office)
As President Trump pushes massive tax cuts for the wealthy our state government should be at the forefront of implementing progressive tax policy to help working families. Expanding the state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is an effective and affordable way to reward work and bring low-income families into the middle class. If Governor Cuomo wants to show that New York can be a progressive beacon in the Trump era, he should push to double the size of the state EITC.
A working parent earning the minimum wage in the Bronx or Schenectady got a much-deserved raise this year and will again next January as a result of increases in the state minimum wage. At the same time that they earn more, however, they pay more in taxes and risk losing valuable benefits such as child care assistance, food stamps, and rental assistance. The EITC helps make up for these losses if they occur.
The EITC is a credit that increases tax refunds and goes up as recipients earn more. For example, this year a single parent with one child earning $17,000 will get a $3,400 federal credit that they can put towards child-care, rent, food, and paying down debt.
Currently, the state-level credit pays 30% of the federal EITC. In 2014, on average families with one child received $666 from the state EITC and families with two kids $1064.
Economists have shown that the EITC leads to both increased employment and decreased poverty by helping over 9 million Americans meet their basic needs. The EITC helps working families join the middle-class, allowing them to pay down debt and build assets. Unlike many economic development projects, which can be ineffective and politicized, the EITC puts cash into the hands of working people in the communities that need consumer spending, economic growth, and jobs.
Policymakers and analysts left, right, and center have supported expanding the EITC. The federal program began under Republican President Gerald Ford and was significantly expanded under President Bill Clinton. In the State Assembly, Democratic Speaker Carl Heastie and the GOP minority leader, Brian Kolb, have both advocated for increasing the credit.
Expanding the EITC will also help make up for New York’s regressive tax system, which burdens the working people more than the wealthy. The Fiscal Policy Institute found that New Yorkers making under $18,000 a year pay 10% of their income in state and local taxes, while families in the top 1% only pay 8% of their income in taxes. An expanded EITC will give back some of the property, sales, and income taxes that working families pay.
Moreover, the federal EITC does not take into account the New York’s high cost of living, which is 15.7% above the national average. An expanded EITC will help alleviate the additional burden that high prices put on low-income New Yorkers.
Doubling the EITC to 60% of the federal credit would be a small portion of the state’s $153 billion budget this year. In 2014 the cost of the EITC was under $1.1 billion and helped over 1.6 million working New Yorkers. Governor Cuomo could easily pay for expanding the EITC by limiting tax deductions and exclusions for high-income individuals and cutting corporate subsidies.
New York’s working families deserve a raise and an opportunity to enter the middle class. Doubling the state EITC is the perfect way to give them a hand up.
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Devin Gould is a graduate student in public policy at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He previously worked at the NYC Economic Development Corporation and was President of the Four Freedoms Democratic Club in Manhattan.
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Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, left, & Tish James, the author, center-left
New York City’s political scene is reeling from the shocking news that one of its brightest stars is calling it quits. City Council Member Julissa Ferreras-Copeland announced that she won’t run for re-election so she can spend more time to with her family, which includes her young son.
As the city’s Public Advocate, I’ve worked closely with Julissa as she’s fought with unrelenting passion for the communities she represents. I’ve also watched her closely as she’s balanced the challenges of motherhood and political office.
As her friend and ally, I wholeheartedly support Julissa’s choice to forego re-election, and chance to be the next City Council Speaker. But I’m troubled by the fact that once again, it’s the woman who has to make impossible choices and deep sacrifices in a society engineered to give working men a pass on these matters.
Julissa’s struggle is emblematic of the challenges working women endure as they juggle personal and professional obligations.
While Julissa faced an unusual set of formidable personal circumstances because she and her spouse have been living in different states, her job offered a level of flexibility few women enjoy. The City affords its employees important benefits and Julissa’s powerful position allowed her some autonomy. One might argue Julissa has it better than most working women. But that’s precisely the point – if a gifted politician like Julissa Ferreras-Copeland – chair of the powerful City Council Finance Committee that shapes New York City’s $85 billion budget – has to drop her professional pursuits and make impossible choices, what does that say about other women struggling with even more challenging situations?
Society praises strong, ambitious women and encourages them to “lean in” and lead. But it does so without providing the foundation for their long-term success: adequate family leave, flexible work schedules, and equal pay.
As an elected official, I have pushed for measures and proposed legislation for mandatory paid family leave and banning salary history to close the gender wealth divide, aimed at easing the burden of the balancing act for New York women. However, our national policies and priorities must shift to ensure that women have the support to excel at the highest echelons without sacrificing their personal lives for professional success.
According to the Pew Research Center, when it comes to government supported family leave, the United States ranks dead last, offering no mandatory paid time off. Experts say that parental leave bolsters women’s employment and helps boost future earnings, based on evidence from countries and states with paid leave policies. It increases the likelihood that women will return to their jobs after giving birth, allowing the country to retain some of its best, most industrious talent in the workforce.
There are also clear benefits for generous paid sick leave policies, which ultimately add to companies’ bottom lines by reducing employee absences and departures and improving productivity. Generous gender neutral policies that give working parents and family caretakers paid leave and subsidized childcare aren’t just good for families, they’re also good for business.
Beyond these public policy approaches, as a nation we must reset our collective mindset to imagine a paradigm where women alone don’t have to make gut-wrenching choices between career and family.
Of course, that cannot happen if our leaders don’t reflect the makeup of the
electorate.
With Julissa not returning to the City Council and four female lawmakers term-limited, we could be down to just eight women in the 51-member City Council -- potentially fewer based on the outcomes for some incumbents seeking re-election. This is on top of the fact that only 20% of the U.S. Congress and 25% of our State Legislature is made up of women.
This isn’t a numbers game. And it’s not even about our government. It’s about how our society values working women and what steps we’re willing to take to make it possible for today’s working women to thrive.
As I continue to tackle this issue, I’ll be inspired by Julissa Ferreras-Copeland and the countless other Julissas out there contributing to our workplaces, our families, and our communities with devotion and passion that our society simply cannot afford to overlook.
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Letitia James is the Public Advocate of New York City. On Twitter @TishJames.
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(photo via @AGSchneiderman)
In February, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman introduced the New York Votes Act, a comprehensive set of bills to protect and expand voting rights in New York. Among other issues, the Act includes no-excuse absentee ballots, early voting, and automatic voter registration.
This legislation is a step in the right direction, but I worry that it ignores the most impactful form of voter suppression facing New York: the state’s closed primary system.
About 3.3 million independent and unaffiliated voters are locked out of New York’s closed primaries -- more voters than the Republican Party has enrolled in the entire state!. The system impacts over a million more New Yorkers than automatic voter registration would.
Some argue that independents aren’t technically “disenfranchised” in New York because they still get to vote in the general election. But here’s the thing: New York districts are so uncompetitive -- as a result of partisan gerrymandering -- that over 90 percent of elections are determined in the primary. By the time the general election comes around, most races have already been decided.
Hundreds of thousands of voters were furious when they couldn’t vote in the New York presidential primary last year. Many tried to change their party registration ahead of time, and were still denied a vote, due to this ridiculous rule and the untenable lead time required. New York’s voting laws stifled many new voters or those newly engaged in politics that wanted to participate in our democracy.
I witnessed many of my grassroots organizers and colleagues, people incredibly engaged in the campaign process, not able to vote or forced to vote by affidavit, only to find out later in the mail their vote wasn’t counted. This is exactly what contributes to lower civic and political engagement, and in turn, lower voter turnout.
While Schneiderman originally proposed giving independents the ability to change their party affiliation up to 10 days (in-person) or 25 days (by mail) ahead of a primary, the final version of the New York Votes Act will move the deadline to four months ahead of a primary. If the bill passes, New York would only move from having the longest wait period to change party affiliation to the second longest wait. That’s not reform.
And regardless of the affiliation deadline, the solution fails to address the core reason why so many voters are increasingly becoming independent; they don’t want to join a party for any reason or duration of time. No one should have to register with a party in order to vote in any election. Attorney General Schneiderman even acknowledged that in his report on voting reform, going as far as to recognize that: “Many of these individuals had no interest in affiliating with either of the two major parties” in order to vote. So why make them?
No wonder independent voting rights advocate Francis Barry wrote in a recent op-ed: “New York is the worst state for independents, bar none.” And no wonder New York consistently ranks among the lowest in voter turnout in the country.
There is a strong connection between closed primaries and low turnout in the general. Four of the five states with the lowest turnout in 2016 have closed primaries. The five states with the highest voter turnout in 2016 all use open primaries.
When you lock millions of voters out of the primaries, you can’t expect them to turn out for your party in the general election. That much is obvious. Independent voters want to be a part of the political process from day one, not ignored during the primary or told “join a party if you want to vote.”
The abysmal voter turnout in New York is a large part of the reason why Schneiderman introduced the New York Votes Act in the first place. The day the legislation was introduced, he held a press conference at Federal Hall, where he stood in front of a crowd of voting reform activists and declared his support for any legislation that “makes it easier to vote.”
So why does the New York Votes Act tout automatic voter registration as the centerpiece of reform, rather than the single most impactful issue facing New York voters -- the very issue that has the biggest effect on voter turnout?
What good is automatic voter registration for the general election when the vast majority of races are determined in the primary? And why focus on it at the expense of over 3 million voters who want to vote but don’t want to be forced into choosing a party?
Millions of Americans support open primaries. The current system, in which taxpayers fund closed primaries that exclude huge swaths of voters, is unsustainable. You cannot lock out the second biggest voting bloc in a state from participating in what almost always amounts to the only meaningful round of voting. That’s not democracy.
Primaries are public elections funded by taxpayers. Everyone should be allowed to vote in them, regardless of party affiliation.
As a grassroots activist who organized for Bernie Sanders in four different states -- and have since joined NYPAN and the Democratic Socialists of America -- I’ve heard from hundreds of Americans who are fed up with way the country runs its elections.
That’s why I’m supporting the Open Primaries petition to Attorney General Schneiderman and the New York State Legislature to do the right thing, and expand the New York Votes Act to include open primaries.
Abide by your own words, Mr. Attorney General, and make it easier to vote in New York, for all New Yorkers, by opening the primaries.
Make New York a true democracy.
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Jeremy Kaplan is an independent filmmaker and political activist.
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