Bishop Matthew H. Clark joined New York clergy in sending a letter to Gov. Eliot Spitzer asking that Spitzer’s proposed tuition tax deduction remain in his final budget. The proposal would allow families of school-aged children to deduct up to $1,000 of tuition expenses from their taxable income.
New York State United Teachers has said the deduction would be a back-door subsidy of private schools. However, the New York State Catholic Conference estimates that families whose children attend private or religious schools save taxpayers $7.5 billion a year because they pay public-school taxes without using public-school services.
“We are shocked that anyone could, or would, oppose this modest program,” the letter said. Catholic-schools supporters also sent state lawmakers more than 30,000 messages between March 19 and March 26 advocating for the deduction.
