Not Too High A Price

In Greenwich and Stamford, FDNY has become the trendiest designer label. To the south, those who used to tell their friends that they hail from New Jersey have taken to saying instead that they work in New York City. Aboard the Long Island Railroad, businessmen proudly sport Big Apple pins in their lapels. But although commuters may be discovering how much they owe the city, they have not begun to pay off that debt. Commuters once paid a small tax on income earned in the city. Two years ago, that tax was repealed. That did not mean that firefighters or police began to demand proof of residency before rushing to help. It merely meant that every time commuters benefited from the work of a civil servant, whether heroic or mundane, city residents footed the bill.

Now, New York City is facing a crisis. There is a yawning budget gap--$5 billion is the Mayor's conservative estimate. And it seems that while they may revere New York's Bravest, and idolize New York's Finest, when it comes time to pay the tab, commuters are New York's Stingiest.

The problem stems from a political game of chicken gone awry. Two years ago, in the middle of a special election for a state senate seat in Rockland and Orange Counties, the Republican-controlled Senate hit upon a great idea. They would repeal the commuter tax, wait for it to go down to predictable defeat in the Democrat-dominated Assembly, and turn it into the centerpiece of the campaign.

The Assembly Speaker, from Manhattan of all places, devised a cunning counterstroke. He would instruct his legislators to approve the repeal. After all, he reasoned, the City was sitting atop an enormous budget surplus. Mayor Giuliani, along with every other thinking person in the state, was appalled. That sealed the matter. Democratic legislators delighted in the opportunity to stick it to Rudy and gleefully repealed the tax.

Forget, for the moment, that the Democratic candidate lost despite the repeal, and the Republican majority increased from ten to eleven. (Everyone else has already forgotten, anyway.) Nevermind the fact that polls showed most of the state supporting the tax. The point is not the inanity of the political calculations, or the use of fiscal policy to settle scores. When the dust had settled, all that mattered was that New York City was the poorer.

Then it got worse. The legislature was solely interested in winning votes, and so it had repealed the tax only for state residents. Connecticut and New Jersey complained that to tax them alone was unfair, and the courts agreed. In the end, New York City was out $360 million in annual revenue. A few people cheered. The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, has published extensive studies of the correlation between taxes and employment in the city, concluding that lowering taxes creates jobs. It unequivocally opposes the reinstatement of the tax, arguing that the city should instead trim its budget.

The Citizen's Budget Commission, a non-partisan watchdog group, has also been complaining about the city's tax burden for years. It agrees that the city should cut costs. But it makes a crucial point--the problem here is not inefficient government or unnecessary spending, but that commuters are receiving vital services for which they have not paid. The net result, it argues, is that taxes are even higher for city residents who make up the difference.

This year, the tax would have brought in more than $500 million. That is a great deal of money for the city, but not very much for individual commuters. The levy represented 0.45 percent of taxable income. For the average middle-class commuter, it amounted to less than a dollar a day.

Recently, the Assembly Speaker appeared to have a change of heart. But as soon as he suggested that commuters might again be asked to contribute, he was met with howls of outrage from Albany. It seems that this is an election year, and the Governor is not about to let a mere fiscal crisis threaten his newfound popularity. It is a position with a certain perverse logic--the Governor is benefiting from the NYPD and FDNY just like commuters, and he does not seem particularly inclined to pay for it, either.

For months, Americans have asked what they can do to help our beleaguered city. For those who commute, there is an answer. They can pay for services that they use every day. It may not be easy. Commuters will have to tighten their belts, bite the bullet, and somehow scrape together the staggering sum of a dollar a day. But in a time of crisis, no sacrifice is too great--not even paying our bills.

Yoni Appelbaum is a Columbia College junior majoring in political science.