Cowardly Kathy Hochul tries to disown her NYC pied--terre tax

Gov.Kathy Hochul is looking to have it both ways yet again.This time, she’s rushing to dodge fury over the pied-à-terre tax she passed into law to please Mayor Zohran — after months of taking credit for it from tax-the-rich lefties.Remember: The gov initially boasted about the surcharge on out-of-town property owners, insisting its targets need to “pay their fair share.”“We’re talking about people who are ultra-wealthy,” she said — falsely, since the tax hits owners not just of one- to three-family homes worth $5 million and up, but also of coops and condos valued as low as $1 million.

That was itself a reversal, since she’d vowed time and again to not raise taxes this year, until Mamdani’s mayoral win suggested political winds were shifting.Now she’s embarrassed by City Hall’s rollout of her tax — the mayor’s gloating videos and social-media posts, his nasty enemies list — and acting like she’d barely even heard of the tax that her own office designed.“We’re not responsible,” she pleaded Monday, as a judge slapped a freeze on it.

“It’s up to [the city’s] tax department.”More butt-covering: The state will “encourage City Hall to try and streamline this.” Gee, thanks, gov.Not that she can stop showing the other face: Her spokesman still stressed that Hochul believes “people who can afford a multimillion-dollar second home ..

.can afford to pay their fair share.”Why is an added tax fair, anyway? These people use far less of the public services their regular property taxes pay for.

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Never miss a story.More important: I she down with Mamdani’s “tax the rich” agenda or not?If she wants the credit, she has to take the blame, too.But that’s not how Hochul rolls.When her congestion-pricing plan caused an upro...