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    Pandering to Voters with $400 Checks Won’t Fix New York’s Real Problem

    DAMON K JONESBy No Comments4 Mins Read

    $400 Checks Won’t Fix New York’s Real Problem

    Let’s cut through the noise. New York politicians are patting themselves on the back for sending out “inflation refund checks.” Two hundred here, four hundred there. Meanwhile, the state is staring at a $10.5 billion budget deficit, with billions more projected in the years ahead. At the same time, New York’s Corrections Department just blew $445 million on overtime pay — a glaring example of mismanagement that wastes taxpayer dollars while families struggle to keep their homes. That’s not leadership — that’s bad management dressed up as generosity.

    Read: Job Too Dangerous: State Spends $445 Million on Overtime and National Guard in Jail

    Political Pandering 101

    This is classic political pandering. Albany knows people are hurting, so instead of fixing the reason why — overtaxation, runaway spending, broken priorities — they hand out a small check and hope you’ll say thank you at the ballot box. It’s an old trick: make people feel like they’re “getting something” while ignoring the bigger hole they dug in the first place.

    How Black Communities Get Played

    And let’s be honest: this has been the modus operandi of New York politics toward Black people for decades. We’ve been conditioned to believe that government “cares” when it gives us something — a rebate check, a temporary program, a ribbon-cutting photo op. But when you look at the outcomes, it’s really nothing.

    Because while the checks are cashed, our communities are still stuck with the same problems:

    • High crime rates because public safety is managed, not solved.
    • Lack of Black-owned businesses because there’s no push for economic independence, just dependency.
    • Underfunded schools, because funding is tied to property taxes, we can barely afford.

    And here’s the most brutal truth: Black homeowners suffer the most under New York’s property tax system. We fought hard to achieve homeownership despite facing redlining, discrimination, and rising costs. But those victories are hollow if property taxes strip the wealth right back out of our communities. Too many Black seniors are forced to sell their homes just to survive. Too many families can’t pass property down to the next generation because the tax bill eats them alive.

    That $400 refund doesn’t even scratch the surface of that loss.

    The Real Weight on New Yorkers

    A $400 check doesn’t mean anything when families in places like Westchester are paying $13,000 to $20,000 every year in property taxes. That’s the real backbreaker. You can’t budget your way to affordability when the state treats homeowners like ATMs. And you can’t build long-term stability when your leaders spend more energy on gimmicks than on fixing the system that drives people out of New York in the first place.

    The Bottom Line

    New Yorkers are overtaxed, underserved, and misled. And the sad part is, as long as politicians can buy headlines with refund checks, they assume you’ll keep voting for them. For Black communities, it’s even worse: we’ve been conditioned to clap for crumbs while carrying the heaviest tax burden — watching our wealth drained, our homes lost, and our neighborhoods decline.

    The question is: when do we break the cycle and demand policies that fix the problems instead of checks that paper them over?

    What Real Help Looks Like

    If Hochul really wanted to help, here’s what she’d be talking about:

    • End or cap property taxes for seniors so they’re not taxed out of their homes.
    • Fund schools through the state budget instead of tying them to local property values. That way Mount Vernon and Yonkers don’t keep falling behind while wealthy suburbs thrive.
    • Circuit breaker rules so your property taxes never take more than a set share of your income.
    • Shift away from property taxes altogether, spreading the tax burden fairly instead of punishing homeowners.

    That’s real reform. That’s the kind of change that actually keeps families in their homes.

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