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Is This Pro-NYC Lobbying Group A "Front" For Rich New Yorkers Scared Of Higher Taxes?
By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Aug 27, 2020
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By
Jake Offenhartz
Published Aug 27, 2020
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The future of New York City may be uncertain, but the outlook for “Campaign for New York’s Future,” a new lobbying group seeking to shoot down proposed taxes hikes on the ultra-wealthy, is growing bleaker by the hour.
The coalition of business and civic leaders launched this week with the fuzzy goal of "building a more prosperous future for all New Yorkers." Led by former New York governor David Paterson, and reportedly bankrolled by the billionaire Republican megadonor Paul Singer, the bipartisan group boasted a formidable board of well-known bosses and advocates from the tech, finance, and transportation sectors.
The trouble began after a profile in the Wall Street Journal on Monday noted the campaign's "efforts would include lobbying against taxes on financial transactions and wealth, as well as against tax increases on top earners."
Several people online pointed out that the campaign's agenda was at odds with the work of many of the group's listed partners — the New York League of Conservation Voters, for example, as well as the Riders Alliance, which has long called for taxing the wealthy to fund public transit.
By Wednesday afternoon, three of the group's seven partners had ended their affiliation with the campaign.
"We signed on to a coalition effort we hoped would uplift working class bus riders — not billionaires— in New York's reopening and recovery," the Riders Alliance wrote on Twitter, announcing that they were cutting ties with the group.
Similar statements soon came from the New York League of Conservation Voters and the NYC Hospitality Alliance.
"It is now clear that the campaign's agenda on taxes is not aligned with our agenda," said Andrew Rigie, the executive director of the NYC Hospitality Alliance.
In a statement to Gothamist, a spokesperson for Tusk Strategies, which is handling PR for the Campaign for New York’s Future, essentially blamed online bullying for scaring advocates away from the antitax group.
"We launched this campaign to have a serious conversation about how we can come together to rebuild New York into a stronger, more resilient city than ever before. It's disappointing -- but not surprising -- that some of the loudest voices in our politics care more about winning the war on Twitter than putting in the work to revitalize our small businesses, cultural institutions and communities. It's also clear that those voices won't stop bullying some of our partners until they submit. We want no part of that, so while we continue to support all of these great organizations, we are releasing each of them from their commitments to our campaign and look forward to marching forward with our full agenda, undeterred, in the days and weeks ahead."
Michael Kink, executive director of the Strong Economy For All Coalition, and one of the first to question the group's backers online, called the response "ridiculous."
"That’s not bullying, that’s a conversation between activists and allies that respect one another," Kink told Gothamist. Referring to reports that Paul Singer is funding the project, he added, "Bullying is when you take over a company, destroy thousands of jobs, steal the pension money and dump the carcass into bankruptcy."
(A spokesperson for the campaign denied Singer's involvement, but declined to provide further info about the group's donors.)
There are currently several wealth tax policies on the table to help fill a two-year, $30 billion budget shortfall created by the pandemic. Among the options put forth by lawmakers are a billionaires' tax to create a fund for workers excluded from typical government relief, an ultra-millionaires' tax for education funding, and several proposals that advocates say could raise as much as $35 billion a year, rather than resorting to budget cuts.
While many of the richest Americans have seen their wealth increase since the start of the pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo also remains opposed to further taxes, claiming that monied New Yorkers will just move somewhere else. He said he arrived at this decision after talking "all day long" to people in the Hamptons.
A recent poll found that 80 percent of New Yorkers would support raising taxes on those who make more than $2 million a year.
"The idea of asking billionaires and multi-millionaires to pay more in taxes is so overwhelmingly politically popular that billionaires need to hide between other entities," Kink added. "They set this thing up as a front to hide their own defense."
Tagged
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governor cuomo
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Why I'm Leaving The Campaign For New York's Future
Jake Offenhartz
Jake Offenhartz is a former Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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