The Green Party candidate for Governor says he believes he can win as the only progressive in a three-way race for governor. Howie Hawkins was in Buffalo late last week delivering the message that his plans to boost New York State’s economy that don’t include START-UP NY projects.
Hawkins says his alternative to START-UP NY would be to hire unemployed people to work public jobs, repairing cities’ abandoned and broken infrastructure. He says the plan is much cheaper than having tax free zones across the state.
“START-UP NY is tax-free, but we’ve done these tax-free zones, we’ve had empire zones, enterprise zones and they always ending up costing more than advertized. Cuomo said it would be cost free, but there’s actually $323 million in the budget to promote and administer the program and there’s no estimate as to what we’ll lose in terms of market share. Basically, they’re redistributing the tax burden from these taxes and businesses to taxpaying businesses and workers,” said Hawkins.
Hawkins says he believes his opponents Republican Rob Astorino and Democrat incumbent governor Andrew Cuomo, are trying to outbid each other on how much they can cut taxes and spending. He says his plan to provide property tax relief would be to restore revenue sharing.
“Which in the 1970’s was 8 percent of state revenues now it’s less than 1 percent, and now because the state doesn’t pay for its mandates we had to raise property taxes, cut our schools and cut our public services. So, I think we need to go back to the more progressive tax structure we had in the 1970’s for income, we didn’t have cooperate welfare, and we kept the stock transfer tax instead of rebating it. With that extra money I estimated we would have about $30 billion a year, with about $6 billion we could provide full revenue sharing of 8 percent and it would be about 8 times more aid to municipalities than we get now, and with that you can pay for your state mandates,” said Hawkins.
The Green Party candidate’s other plans include raising the minimum wage to $15, providing healthcare for everyone, and creating jobs by embracing renewable resources. Hawkins says by taking part in debates and having equal media attention, he believes he can win this fall’s three-way race for governor.