The Governor calls it a tax break - a tax break worth a couple of hundred dollars. But the people who teach your kids call it bad public policy.
The idea that parents who send their kids to a private or parochial school get a tax deduction was a surprise for many in the budget plan Governor Spitzer laid out. And some are saying it was snuck in, in the five-volume budget.
And the proposal makes up just two lines. NEWS10's John McLoughlin explains why those two little lines could be what many people will care the most about.
The Governor never even mentioned it during his budget briefings - but there it was, a new personal income tax deduction of up to one-thousand dollars for each kid in private or parochial school.
"Were you surprised when you saw this in the budget?" McLoughlin asked Steve Allinger, the Legislative Director of the New York State United Teachers Union.
"Yes, we were surprised," Allinger said.
Allinger, the lobbyist for NYSUT, says tax deductions for religious schools not only harm public education - he says they are simply wrong, "to use the public's tax expenditures or appropriations to support narrow private sectarian uses."
"They've got a lot of nerve complaining," says Dennis Poust, Legislative Director for the New York State Catholic Conference.
Poust says NYSUT's got a lot of nerve after Spitzer pledged a record seven-billion dollars in new school aid, while the private and parochial schools are educating half-a-million youngsters for a lot less money.
"And they're complaining 'cause our parents might get a hundred bucks to help them with their tuition?" says Poust. "That takes a lot of nerve."
The Governor did praise parochial schools during last Monday's speech on education, saying, "many private and parochial schools do an excellent job of educating many of our kids." But again, no mention of a tax break. That deduction, by the way, depending on a parent's tax bracket, might be worth 50, 100, 150-dollars.
"It's not going to be a 'make or break' thing for our parents in terms of tuition at this time, but our hope is to expand on it," Poust says.
"The Catholic Conference said, hey look, public education is getting billions of dollars more - why not a little bit of money for people who send their kids to parochial schools?" McLoughlin asked Allinger.
"Well, most of these proposals start out as a little, but then you see Legislative bills that are in excess of one-billion dollars," says Allinger.
Once again, this would be a one-thousand dollar deduction, not a tax credit - and it works out to about 60 or 70-dollars a kid.
You may recall that Governor Pataki tried last year to get a one-thousand dollar credit, which is worth one-thousand dollars. But there was such an uproar, they had to cut it back to 300-dollars, and give it to everybody in public or private schools.
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