Mandate Relief Laws Could Help Local Schools

To complement a , New York State lawmakers passed mandate relief ordinances this past Friday night in an effort to ease school districts in adhering to tightened budgets.

The mandate relief legislation aims to provide individual school districts the discretion to reduce or eliminate state requirements concerning education programs, travel, and operational administrative costs, to name a few. The move is a sister legislation to the tax cap on annual property taxes passed Friday night, which will limit school districts from increasing property taxes by more than 2 percent, thus limiting expenditures.

School districts now have more flexibility to cut costs by re-working bus routes based on ridership, re-tooling spending for goods, and altering special education programs.

In addition, school districts of less than 1,000 students can now group with one or two other similarly sized districts under just one Superintendent, a stipulation local Assemblyman Fred Thiele, I-Sag Harbor, introduced to the legislate. 

In previous years, each school district was required to carry one superintendent, which some argue had a detrimental administrative cost on small schools.

While the State Assembly majority views this as a legislative victory for taxpayers and the schools, some officials believe the mandate relief initiative will not affect a large enough part of the budget to be effective. The legislation does not limit Medicaid funding nor include a restructuring of employee benefits packages, which traditionally have a significant role in driving up budgets.

"It's very frustrating to me as a representative of suburban and rural Long Island," said Assemblyman Daniel Losquadro, R—Shoreham. Losquadro said suburban representatives such as himself had argued that increased Medicaid co-pays would ease the debt burden of the local school districts, which city representatives felt was unfair and discouraging.

"I don't think you can find a single person who will tell you we're not taxed enough in this state," Losquadro said. "The mandate relief and the cap are steps in the right direction, but ... it's not nearly enough."

David Gamberg, Southold School District Superintendent, agreed that the mandate relief initiative is promising, but still in its infancy.

"There's more work that needs to happen," said Gamberg.

Gamberg made reference to the newly established Mandate Relief Committee as possibly being able to sort out the issues that could be lost to partisanship. The Mandate Relief Committee will serve to reduce unwieldy spending by analyzing statistics at the local level, and act as an appeals board for the districts.

Losquadro argued increased mandate relief and the climbing state debt must be at the top of the agenda in next year's assembly. Losquadro specifically called for changes to the Triborough Amendment, which prevents the state from altering expired labor agreements until a new contract is negotiated.

Losquadro said he believes that through the Triborough Amendment, school district employees are less inclined to alter the employee-benefit landscape.

Still, Losquadro understands the far-reaching accomplishments of this year's assembly, and among legislative victories is a culture of progress.

"It is a very far-reaching agenda," Losquadro said. "But we closed the deficit on a $10 billion budget. We passed an ethics reform. We passed a tax cap. We got a lot done this year."