Even Frank Mauro admits that raising taxes in the present perilous economic climate isn’t an altogether attractive fiscal option. Even if the taxes would be assessed on the most affluent New Yorkers.

Mauro, the executive director of the left-of-center Fiscal Policy Institute in Albany, might easily be assumed to be a prominent proponent of such a tax change, and he is, in fact. But he’s also candid enough to acknowledge that it’s more nearly a necessity—in view of the state’s projected $14 billion-plus budget deficit—than an optimal choice. In very bad economic circumstances, he said recently during a telephone interview, “You have to choose among undesirable options.”

The tax proposal Mauro is discussing has been introduced as one means of closing part of that $14 billion gap. Sponsored by Democrats Eric Schneiderman in the State Senate and Darryl Towns in the Assembly, it would raise taxes on the highest 3.5 percent of New York taxpayers, those with at least $250,000 in reported income. It’s intended to diminish that projected deficit by 40-45 percent, about $6 billion. Governor David Paterson addressed the problem in his budget proposal by a combination of program cuts and a mix of new fees and taxes, including a tuition increase of more than $600 at state universities and a levy on the purchase price of sugar-laden soft drinks.

Last week, however, he backed away from these new levies without making clear how he would make up the estimated $1.3 billion difference, or endorsing the income tax increase.

This, titled the Fair Share tax by its sponsors, has attracted considerable support from New Yorkers, to judge by a couple of recent polls. Last month, a Quinnipiac University survey found that state residents supported such an increase by majorities of 55-80 percent, depending on whether the taxes began at $250,000, $500,000, or $1 million. A Sienna College poll reported on March 8 found that 77 percent agreed with an increase in millionaires’ taxes.

So the Fair Share tax might seem to be sailing into favorable legislative winds, particularly in the perennially depressed economy in Western New York.

Except that enthusiasm here could generously be termed muted. Of the 22 Senate sponsors of this bill, only one, Antoine Thompson, D-Buffalo, comes from this region. And only Thompson has been publicly touting the bill here and in Albany. At a rally for the legislation on the University at Buffalo’s South Campus three weeks ago, Thompson decried the governor’s taxes, fees, and cuts. “If we look at my district alone,” he told the audience of 40-odd people, “there are $8 million in cuts to healthcare facilities.” The senator was the only public office holder at the rally, although several invitations to others had been tendered by the coalition of community organizations that arranged it. There may be latent or incipient support from others in the 12-member Western New York legislative delegation, but none are emphasizing it to their constituents.

The Fair Share tax would set a rate of 8.25 percent for incomes of at least $250,000, from the current top rate of 6.85 percent; 8.97 percent at the $500,000 level; and 10.3 percent at $1 million. The enhanced levies are primarily advocated as a response to the state’s budget shortfall, but there’s another, underlying purpose: restoring a small measure of equity to New York’s fiscal operations. That 6.85 percent is assessed on household incomes of $40,000, for example, and on those of $4 million. The situation seems a very model of regressivity and inequity. As Mauro noted during a recent telephone interview, “The present tax cap exacerbates the growing disparities between rich and poor” in New York. As he and others point out, over the last 30 years, New York has reduced that cap, and taxes on the wealthy, by more than 50 percent.

But the opposition to doing anything to redress even modestly that imbalance remains strong. Take the objections of 59th District State Senator Dale Volker. Craig Miller, a press representative for the Republican Volker, dismissed one popular term for the tax bill, “the millionaires’ tax.” “It’s not a millionaires’ tax,” Miller told Artvoice last week. “It’s a middle-class tax.” A little curiously, considering which senator he was speaking for, Miller argued that “in New York City, $250,000 is two municipal employees.” Continuing in that vein, he observed, “In Westchester County, $250,000 is middle class.”

Maybe, but we’re not in Kansas anymore, or Westchester, and there are a lot of people in New Rochelle, Yonkers, and White Plains who don’t have a prayer of becoming members of that “middle class.”

But it’s not just on the Republican side of the legislative aisle that a reluctance to support the Fair Share measure can be detected. Two weeks ago, a Buffalo News story had liberal Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, a Buffalo Democrat, voicing support for it via a video hook-up to a rally at True Bethel Baptist Church in the city. This report is probably misleading. Last week, during a phone interview, the assemblyman said, “Right now, I’m inclined to vote against it.” Hoyt said he wants a commitment to cut the size of state government written into the eventual budget agreement before he’ll consider any tax hikes. “I want to be able to say we’ve reformed state government,” he said.

Another Democratic member of the Assembly from Buffalo, Crystal Peoples, was less forthright. She didn’t respond to two phone requests for a comment on the legislation.

It’s at least a little difficult to comprehend why Thompson is so far so conspicuous in his advocacy for it. In a seemingly ambivalent, somewhat muddled editorial last Saturday, the Buffalo News cited Governor Paterson for “bravely” resisting calls to raise taxes to meet the budget problem. It may be Thompson who’s being brave, perhaps more than he had intended to be.

There is a set of sound economic, political and social reasons why this shouldn’t be the case. Liz Smith, lead organizer of the Working Families Party in Western New York, says that there’s some recognition of this in Albany. At a recent meeting there with Democratic legislative leaders, she reports they admitted “there was no way they can balance the budget without these tax changes.”

This year’s polling data don’t just show general support for them; for each of the three tax brackets there was an even more convincing majority from both Democratic and Independent respondents. (For the lowest level, $250,000, they were 67 percent and 59 percent, respectively, in the Quinnipiac poll.) These data may be of particular relevance to someone like Hoyt, who, some observers and proponents suspect, may be holding out for a bill that bases an increase on incomes of at least half a million. (This would yield 90 percent of the total return of the more inclusive proposal.)

The economic arguments for Fair Share are strong. Amid all the wrangling and dire forecasts of economic ill effects, it seems to have been forgotten that in 2003, in the wake of a recession that began two years earlier, the legislature passed a three-year tax hike on New Yorkers reporting at least $500,000 in income, despite a veto by then-Governor George Pataki. The number of high-income tax returns grew by 30 percent during the next several years, economists at the Fiscal Policy Institute have calculated.

Michael Clements, a member of Senator Schneiderman’s Albany staff, points to a study done at Princeton University’s Policy Research Institute which found that after New Jersey passed tax hikes on incomes of at least $500,000, there was no net increase in out-of-state migration, and tax returns from that bracket rose over four years by 70 percent. This is in line with a review of the literature undertaken five years ago for Washington’s Economic Policy Institute by Washington College economist Frank Lynch. He reported that lowering state income taxes had little or no positive association with increased business activity in a state.

After the university rally, Senator Thompson responded to a question about Fair Share’s prospects, saying, “I think it’s going to clear the Assembly, and the Senate is the question, but I’m hopeful about that.”

To which one might wonder, if not now, when?