Agreements reached in the early morning hours because of continued pressure from Nassau County majority Senators and minority Assembly members will provide beneficial increases to education funding and property tax relief to the residents of Nassau County. Initially, the governor’s proposed budget benefited New York City schools at the expense of Long Island schools. Fortunately, because of legislative negotiations, insisted upon by our Long Island delegation, we will see significant funding increases for our local schools.

The Governor’s initial budget proposal would have short-changed Long Island school districts and not provided direct property tax relief to homeowners. However, my legislative colleagues and I managed to negotiate additional funding for Long Island schools as part of the $1.75 billion increase in school funding and restored property tax relief in the form of rebate checks.

For the past few years, Long Island school districts have been short-changed in their share of state education funding. This deficiency has forced local government to pass the cost of fully funding education on to local property owners and taxpayers. The 2007-08 Executive Budget would have only increased educational funding for the 11 schools in the 19th Assembly District by an average of 3.96 percent. Through tough negotiations this past week by our Long Island Republican delegation, we were able to secure an average increase of 10.13 percent for our school districts. As a whole, Nassau County schools will now receive $50 million more than the Governor’s initial education fund proposal. These funds will go a long way to easing our overburdened property taxpayers.

Increased education funding, in the form of High Tax Aid, will add the following amount to school districts in the 19th Assembly District:

• Baldwin - $799,196
• Bellmore - $175,128
• East Meadow - $1,161,529
• Freeport - $983,014
• Levittown - $1,179,646
• Merrick - $276,022
• North Bellmore - $347,752
• North Merrick - $194,571
• Seaford - $395,769
• Wantagh - $550,129

In addition, our delegation was able to include property tax rebate checks for $6 billion statewide to be distributed over the next 3 years. It is crucial that we provide some substantive relief to our overwhelmed homeowners who can no longer afford to keep their homes and live in this state. By putting money directly into the pockets of homeowners in the form of rebate checks, we avert the state simply throwing it into the bottomless pit of funding.