Maggie’s deceptive new ad
I saw a Maggie Brooks ad this weekend about her plan to take sales tax money from the towns. I can’t find it on YouTube, but she claims that schools will get more money under the plan, 10 million more she claims.  I don’t know where she came up with this figure or what the time frame for the 10 million increase is. But my guess is that, with inflation, one would expect roughly a three percent increase in school spending and revenue each year. And I would also estimate that the total school budget for the county is around 400 million to 800 million a year (I’m just guessing but I’m confident I’ve got the right order of magnitude at least). On the lower end, 3 percent of 400 million is 12 million. So if she’s projecting five years down the road, you’d expect an increase of about 63 million (per year). And her plan is supposed to grab about 50 million of that, which leaves a little over 10.
Is that how she figured this out? Has anyone else seen the ad and do people know what the approximate school spending for the whole county is? I realize this is tricky since the city is funded separately, but I’d like to get to the bottom of Maggie’s deceptive numbers.
Increased state aid: $1.76 billion increase in state aid to education provided in this year’s budget. (I think…)
So even with the Brooks-Minarik Tax Grab, the school budgets are larger than they were last year (just not as much larger as the schools were counting on)
But - there was supposed to be Maintenance of Effort, meaning that the increase in education funding was for education improvement ONLY.
Municipalities are not allowed to decrease school budgets just because the state increased funding. The state wrote this into the law so that Big Five cities couldn’t balance their budgets by reducing school funding while the state was increasing funding. Simply put, NY State didn’t increase funding to relieve other governments of their tax burdens - the money was all supposed to go to education.
The legal question is whether this applies to county governments, or just Big 5 Cities. It’s one of the points in the MCSBA suit, I think.
I can’t comment on the “truthiness” of the add, but my question is who is paying to run these ads?
I saw one during the ALCS game on Fox Friday night. My immediate thought was “What does Channel 31 charge for a 30 or 60 sec. local spot during a national sports telecast?” It can’t be cheap…it’s not like this was a rerun of the Family Guy or something. I know nationally Fox drew something like 11 million viewers for game 6, winning the ratings for the night, and I am sure the local number of eyeballs follow that trend. Advertisers pay a premium for numbers like that. So what did Maggie pay?
Certainly more than the school districts could afford to run an ad voicing their dissent.
It doesn’t matter what the truth is. It matters who can spend the most on advertising. BAH!
I believe Maggie’s actually in the clear on this one– she has mentioned a couple times that her campaign is paying for these ads.
She had a huge warchest and no opponent to smear– so she might as well spend it on these ads…
The N.Y.S. elections website shows funds received and spent by campaigns. There was a thread on this recently. That thread linked to the N.Y.S. site, and showed that there was a lot of money spent recently by “Friends of Maggie Brooks” on advertising.
This latest ad in which Maggie states that she needs to “set the record straight” really disgusts me. Can she be sued for lying? Can anyone hold her accountable for lying?
She states that the budget problem was solved locally, yet readily admits that she could do what she did because of the increase in state money to the schools. Since when is state money considered local? Maggie doesn’t control the state money. Second, she claims the school still end up with more money even after the 50% decrease from the county. Maggie fails to mention that the state money came with strings attached–that money is for specific programs. The decrease of county money to the schools means that schools will still have to raise school taxes or cut their budgets.
And has Maggie mentioned in any of her ads about the increased DMV fees or the fee to pay for MCC?
Look no farther than one of her cronies:
In an effort to lower property taxes for Monroe County residents while ensuring that students receive the best possible education, Assemblyman Reilich secured record increases in state school aid in the 2007-08 budget.
Monroe County schools will receive over $72.8 million in state school aid, a 10% increase over last year.
“The largest portion of property taxes goes toward school funding. By increasing state aid to Monroe County school districts, it is my hope that we can lower property taxes for homeowners.â€ÂÂ
–Assemblyman Bill Reilich.
http://assembly.state.ny.us/member_files/134/20070803/
…Now you’ll see where the “ten percent” increase figure came from - it came from YOUR POCKET to the state of New York, and back into her carpet bag.