Center Moriches Taxpayers Community Discussion Forum

School districts, businesses and planning officials Tuesday lambasted a plan to help bail out the Metropolitan Transportation Authority by imposing a payroll tax on employers.

Thomas Shea, president of the Suffolk County School Superintendents Association, said he was "extremely disappointed" by news the plan was advancing.

"I don't believe it is good public policy to use school districts to fund public transportation," he said. He added that while the proposed tax would be .03 percent this year, that "just opens the door for higher rates" in the future.

Wendell Chu, superintendent of the East Islip School District, said he was concerned schools might not be reimbursed for the money they expend on the payroll tax, as officials are proposing.

"At what point, given the state's current fiscal difficulties, are they going to be unable to do that and we'll be left holding that MTA payroll tax as a cut in services to students?" he said.

The disenchantment spread to the business world. Edward Fred, president of CPI Aero Inc., an aircraft parts manufacturer in Edgewood that has 85 employees, said the tax "doesn't seem terribly correct. I think we've gotten bailout happy. We don't have one person in this company who rides the MTA, and yet we have to pay a [higher] payroll tax."

Howard Kipnes, president of Cedar Knolls, builder-developers in Hauppauge, said, "Certainly any tax at this point is wrong. I'm one who believes lower the tax rate and stimulate the people and the economy. Any time you add a tax you're turning away more people from coming here and encouraging more people to leave, especially at a time like this."

Robert Basso, the owner of Advantage Payroll Services in Freeport, said he doesn't often sound off about controversial topics, but the proposed payroll tax has him going.

"It feel it's the last thing we need right now, especially with these tough economic times," he said. "Every nickel we spend on taxes we can't spend on hiring a new employee."

At the Long Island Regional Planning Council Tuesday, chairman John D. Cameron Jr. said the proposed tax would unfairly hurt Long Island. "To have a business in Brookhaven and Riverhead have to pay the same tax as a business in Queens" is unfair, he said. "Long Island's been shortchanged."

"I'm very discouraged," he added. "I don't believe that Long Island's interests were well represented when the MTA's bailout did not include tolls on the East River bridges," which he said would have been an appropriate funding mechanism since it would be based on transportation.

Staff writers James Bernstein, Carrie Mason-Draffen and Olivia Winslow contributed to this story.