Faso Releases His 2015 Property Taxes, Asks Teachout to Release Hers

Kinderhook, NY — September 27, 2016 … In opposing New York’s property tax cap, Professor Zephyr Teachout shows that she doesn’t understand the crushing burdens that residents in the 19th Congressional District are up against and that she, as someone who only recently moved here from Brooklyn, is out of touch, the campaign for John Faso today announced.

View Professor Teachout’s expressed opposition to the cap here.

“It’s easy to oppose a property tax cap when you’ve never had to pay property taxes,” Faso said. “Her radical vision and view that if property owners would just pay a little more, government could solve any number of problems is simply out of touch. High taxes are part of the problem. Professor Teachout is clueless about living in Upstate New York and the burden property taxes impose on homeowners and small businesses.”

Faso recently released his 2015 property taxes and is calling on Teachout to do the same. In fact, he and his wife Mary Frances paid a total of $12,598 in local property taxes in 2015. Included in the breakdown were: $8,210 to the Ichabod Crane School District; $3,334 to the Town of Kinderhook and Columbia County; and $1,054 to the Village of Kinderhook where the Fasos have lived for the past 33 years.

In releasing his 2015 tax payments, Faso — who built a reputation in the state Assembly as a fiscal hawk because he cut spending and balanced budgets — wants residents to know that he understands the burden of property taxes and is committed to reform.

“Had she lived here and been more involved in this community, she might understand, but she doesn’t,” Faso added.

Faso not only supports the property tax cap, but has also proposed a plan to

address New York’s Medicaid mandate on property taxpayers. In addition to paying property taxes and living in this district for more than three decades, Faso has long advocated for a property tax cap, unlike Professor Zephyr Teachout who opposes such a cap and supports rolling it back.

Faso has a long record of cutting taxes and closing budget deficits that go back to his tenure as Minority Leader in the Assembly, where he developed and pushed proposals that led to real balanced budgets – including the first reduction in state spending in decades while closing a $5 billion deficit. He championed legislation that made a difference for tens of thousands of families such as the STAR program and education and real property tax reform. A former board member of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, Faso also served for three years as a member of the Control Board that worked to fix the financial and managerial issues of the City of Buffalo and its school system.

Faso is running on a platform centered around key reform principles to help small businesses, notably simplifying the tax code, ending corporate welfare, investing in small businesses and ending Washington’s regulatory madness.

John Faso (R-Kinderhook) is former Republican leader of the state Assembly and candidate for Congress in the 19th Congressional district. To learn more about Faso, visit johnfaso.com.

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