Yale Should Pay Its Fair Share

The F Word with Laura Flanders

Ancient law, contemporary blowback, a chase-the-rich approach to developing your local economy. It’s not just Puerto Rico that’s mired in debt and a crisis that’s sparing the rich at the expense of the poor. It’s also New Haven. That Connecticut city is in a long drawn out fight with its very own colonial power: Yale University. At isssue is a series of bills that seek to clarify an 1834 state law that granted Yale a special tax exemption. In the eyes of the law, private colleges are like charities. They provide a public service, and because they serve the public good, they are exempt from certain federal and state taxes. At the city level, under that 1834 law, Yale was exempted paying tax on buildings that partly house commercial activity activity too. And New Haven’s seen a lot of Yale-based commercial activity. We’ve seen it all over the United States. New Haven’s dominated by Yale a university-medical-complex: in Baltimore, it was Johns Hopkins, in Jackson Mississippi… IN New Orleans. What those cites have in common is as manufacturing’s declined, universities and their “research parks” or hospitals have expanded. Local officials are attracted to Eds and Meds - institutions that promise growth while doing good. They bring in federal and state dollars. They get tax breaks. Yet the boasts don’t automatically translate into economic or social health for the surrounding communities. Yale is growing geographically and financially; its budget is bigger than many counties. Its endowment tops $23 billion. The college and its health complex are New Haven’s largest employer, occupying some 1,000 acres surrounded by poor and working-class neighborhoods where unemployment rates among African Americans and Latinos stand at between 18 and 20 percent - double that of the city’s white residents. Hospital workers mostly earn low part time wages and are not members of unions. Since taxing real estate and other property is the only form of municipal taxation allowed by state law, New Haven Mayor Toni Harp says that the city needs to update its guidelines. She’s been backing various bills to reconsider Yales 1834 exemption. She’s up against the Ivy League and local business leaders. Yale President Peter Salovey threatened that any change, would lead to a loss of jobs - a decline in research - and the eviction of the symphony. Still Harp and her colleagues are not backing down. And that’s in part because they have the backing of a community led coalition, of clergy, labor, progressive and community alliance. The economy has changed over 182 years, the law needs to do likewise. Watch this space for an anti-colonial movement against colonial corporations.