The following is a copy of a letter sent to Assemblyman Gary Finch and Senator Mike Nozzolio: Eliot Spitzer campaigned on a promise of not raising taxes and actually lowering property taxes. Now we learn that the largest property tax increase of all time is about to be levied against farmers and anyone who owns a few acres of farm land. Large increases in the assessed value of farmland and a simultaneous decrease in the agricultural exemption will have devastating tax consequences for all farmers and anyone who owns just a few acres of farmland. Apparently this is being done because a few farmers have earned a little profit in the past few years and the state is determined to put a stop to it.

Such premeditated discrimination against any other citizens or economic entity would never be tolerated. What further proof does one need of the discriminatory nature of the property tax?

The schools and county governments, with their insatiable greed for ever more tax dollars, have become virtual leeches on rural landowners, sucking out their sustenance until eventually, little by little, the land is surrendered to so-called developers and destroyed forever.

When is the state Legislature going to demand a halt to this frivolous and irresponsible spending by the schools?

How many more taxpayers must lose their land and homes before the state legislature abolishes this most discriminatory of all taxes?

Lee Gamlen

Aurora