ALBANY, N.Y. Jan. 25, 2021 — New York State United Teachers today announced a new statewide advertising campaign calling on the state to implement new taxes on the ultrawealthy to help fund critical public services, including K-12 schools, higher education and health care.
The $300,000 campaign will include digital advertisements, billboards along major state highways and bus ads both upstate and downstate. Highlighting significant increases in billionaire wealth during the pandemic — even as millions of New York families have suffered — the ads note that the ultrawealthy must help rebuild New York State after the COVID-19 pandemic and “Fund Our Future.”
Examples of the ads can be found here.
“Rebuilding New York is not a question of resources — it’s a question of will,” NYSUT President Andy Pallotta said. “It’s long past time that the state asked the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay their fair share toward public services, not just to help address the short-term budget problems we face, but to ensure we’re generating the revenues public schools, colleges and hospitals need for long-term success. ‘Fund Our Future’ isn’t a slogan. It’s a moral imperative now more than ever.”
The union’s new ad campaign follows the release of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget last week. Pallotta said that while NYSUT agrees that New York deserves its fair share of additional stimulus funding from Washington, a two-pronged approach to the state’s fiscal crisis that pairs federal money with new taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers is the right approach.
NYSUT supports revenue proposals that include a wealth tax on New Yorkers with more than $1 billion in wealth, a new ultramillionaires tax on those with incomes over $5 million, a pied-à-terre tax and a corporate tax rate that matches what was levied on corporations and real estate prior to federal tax cuts in 2017. Polling revealed last year that 92 percent of New York voters support increased taxes on the ultrawealthy.
New York State United Teachers is a statewide union with more than 600,000 members in education, human services and health care. NYSUT is affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the National Education Association and the AFL-CIO.