The Charlotte Valley School District in Delaware County had a tough employment situation on their hands until just last week. Former building principal Edgar Whaley had been a focus of controversy — going back at least a year. But that’s all settled now, thanks to a secret, lucrative contract settlement passed by the school’s board of education late last week. Read More
The agreed upon fiscal year 2012-13 state budget contains two smart policy initiatives that both save money and happen to be good public policy: a state takeover of the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) state supplement payment and enactment of a new close to home initiative for low and limited risk youthful offenders. Read More
According to the Wall Street Journal, Seven World Trade Center, Larry Silverstein’s first Ground Zero rebuilding effort, is now worth $940 million. Read More
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg paid to Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein in New York last week. The visits highlight a big risk to both Britain and New York's recoveries. Top leaders o Read More
In delivering on Speaker Sheldon Silver's session-opening pledge to eliminate taxes on New Yorkers earning less than $30,000, Assembly Democrats have come up with a scheme that would make proud. Keep in mind the households in question already pay Read More
So, what to make of this Tier 6 pension thing? Is it truly “bold and transformational” ? Read More
The agreed-upon Tier 6 bill restores much of the benefit reduction originally proposed by Governor Cuomo–especially for career employees. Read More
Based on initial reports of Governor Cuomo’s pension deal with the Legislature –no defined-contribution option,* more marginal changes in other benefit levels for traditional defined-benefit pensions– the union reaction is absurdly (if predictably) over the top. Read More
Well, what do you know? Seventy-one percent of public school teachers in New York think new teachers should be able to choose between a traditional defined-benefit pension and a defined-contribution (DC) plan, like the one available to State University of New York (SUNY) professors for nearly 50 years, according to a poll the Empire Center poll released today... Read More
If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it 100 times: the average annual benefit paid by the state pension system in 2011 was $19,151 — “not a big amount for someone whose [sic] gave a lifetime of service,” as the Public Employees Federation (PEF) puts it in a letter and blast fax to state legislators. Read More
AFSCME, the nation’s biggest public-sector labor union, is mounting a statewide ad campaignclaiming that “politicians in Albany” want to “cut the pensions of firefighters, teachers and nurses by 40 percent.” Read More
The inevitable is now official: Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver today said Governor Cuomo should “work out” his proposed Tier 6 pension reform with public-sector labor unions. As the governor himself pointed out just last week, the Legislature effectively prefers to give unions a “veto” over any change–which, if it sticks, means there will no meaningful change at all. Read More