Share This Article
Photo by: Skeat78
The New York State Capitol, where Mayor de Blasio’s UPK plan was expected to get a modest state funeral, but where–in fact–it has been seem roaming the halls.
City Limits and The Nation have teamed up to cover policy and political developments during the first 100 days of Bill de Blasio’s mayoralty. Read all our posts.
Here it is fourteen days into the Bill de Blasio mayoralty, and we’re still talking about a tax plan that was supposedly “dead on arrival” even before the Democratic primary back in September.
Yesterday in Albany, the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver said, “Thanks to the momentum generated by Mayor Bill de Blasio, we will take the universal pre-K program that we originally proposed, bolster it, expand it so that every four-year-old in this state can benefit from early education and make it sustainable.”
The program Silver referred to is the signature policy proposal from de Blasio’s campaign, the provision universal early childhood education and middle-grade after-school services paid for by a tax on high earners. The reference to sustainability is a nod to de Blasio’s insistence that the program be paid for by the high-earner tax, and not some other budget carve-out that could disappear in subsequent years.
Last week, Bronx State Senator Jeff Klein—who serves as co-leader of the upper house as part of a power-sharing deal between a breakaway group of Democrats and the Republican caucus—said he also supports the tax plan.
Read more here.
