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Sponsors
2 Co-sponsors
History
- Referred to elections
- Referred to elections
Full text
The text isn't available here yet. Check nysenate.gov.
Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:S1552
Title of bill
An act to amend the education law, in relation to school district adjusted gross income for purposes of determining the alterna- tive pupil wealth ratio and combined wealth ratio
Purpose
Excludes the adjusted gross income of the upper and lower 1/2% of taxpayers in a school district from the calculation of the adjusted gross income of such district.
Summary of provisions
The calculation of the adjusted gross income of a school district shall not include the adjusted gross income of the one-half of one percent of the taxpayers in such a school district who have the greatest adjusted gross incomes and shall not include the adjusted gross income of the one-half percent of the taxpayers in such school district who have the lowest adjusted gross income.
Justification
The State Aid formula was established to help provide an objective method to fairly allocate our State's limited education dollars. It attempts to identify, in a fair manner, each district's ability to fund education by measuring wealth. To help assure that goal, the formula has been modified numerous times since its inception.
Unfortunately, due to an existing quirk in the formula, districts with h one or more atypical high earning individuals can find their average income radically skewed. Their higher perceived wealth leads to lower State aid and the unfair result of higher property taxes for everyone in the district. This is not in keeping with the intent of the formula.
In a district not currently affected by this quirk, if a single very wealthy individual moved into the district or even if a resident won a lottery jackpot, State aid to the district could be drastically reduced, unfairly raising, the property taxes of the typical resident. This is neither logical nor fair.
By basing school aid formulas on total wealth in given districts without understanding the income distribution within these districts current state aid formulas penalize the majority of residents in so-called high wealth districts. This legislation seeks to remedy this inequity by removing the Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of both the top and bottom one-half of one percent of taxpayers in a school district. By removing these statistical outliers from a school district's wealth equations, a more accurate wealth picture is presented for the purposes of calculat- ing state school aid.
Legislative history
2011-12 S.3800; 2009-10 S.2728/A.3275.
Fiscal implications
None.
Effective date
This act shall take effect immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.