A lot of new ideas and bills have been tossed around in recent weeks, but one thing that they almost all have in common?  They cost money. Governor Andrew Cuomo spoke on making the property tax cap permanent to maybe slow down some of these more expensive progressive bills.

“I proposed the permanent tax cap,” Gov. Cuomo said.

This is true. Governor Andrew Cuomo first installed the tax cap in 2011, his first year in office. And it worked mostly as intended. Prior to the cap, school taxes were going up on average five percent a year. Now it’s limited to an annual 2 percent growth. However, the cap is supposed to expire in 2020.

“The Democratic Senate is a different creature.”

New York has some of the highest taxes in the nation. Republicans have been solidly behind making the tax cap permanent and until now it has been the Democrats who have been slow to support it. However, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins announced Wednesday that the Senate is now on board.

“I believe in it, the Senate believes in it. That’s not a bad start,” Gov. Cuomo said.

The Assembly however and many unions, are still not behind the tax cap, because of the burden they say this places on local municipalities, especially schools.

“Nobody likes paying taxes I haven’t met anyone who does, but at the same token, we have to be very mindful not to put out local governments out of business because services will suffer,” Assemblyman John McDonald (D-Albany) said.

McDonald says that while the tax cap has been helping property owners, there still needs to be a way that local governments can receive extra aid if needed.

“If we want a quality education system, if we want to have quality communities we need to make sure we don’t put our local governments in a very difficult spot.”

The Governor has his own idea on why the Senate Democrats have now decided to agree with him on the tax cap.

“What they had to run against, what they had to disprove is we’re not going to be the tax raising, tax and spend democrats,” Gov. Cuomo said.

The governor will most likely lay this out as one of his priorities during his state of the state and budget address this Tuesday, January 15th.