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Budget deficits papered over with borrowed money and fiscal gimmicks. Unaffordable union contracts. Pension contributions “amortized” into the future. Retiree health benefits promised but unfunded. Corruption probes and whiffs of scandal. Accountability blurred, responsibility shirked, and hard decisions avoided again and again. That litany could describe any number of old, declining American cities—including a few that, like Detroit, actually went broke. But the same dysfunction exists in affluent corners of New York’s archetypal suburb: Long Island Read More

Score one for the watchdogs. The fiscal-watchdog group the Empire Center had sued the MTA after it refused to produce its 2014 payroll data for months despite a FOIL request. But the MTA recently caved and has now settled out of court, agreeing to not only open its books but pay its foe’s $2,860 in legal fees. Read More

The MTA has now paid the Empire Center's expenses for a successful lawsuit compelling timely release of the agency's payroll data. Read More

Bravos to the Empire Center for Public Policy, an independent nonprofit think tank that posts salaries for state employees at SeeThroughNY.net and which recently reached a settlement with the state Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Read More

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will pay the legal fees for a fiscally conservative think tank after admitting it was slow to respond to a public records request. Read More

The state Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Empire Center for Public Policy have reached an out-of-court settlement in which the MTA acknowledges its failure to respond “in a timely manner” to the Center’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Read More

Working for the MTA is the fast track to a six-figure salary. One in four Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees made $100,000 or more in 2014, according to payroll data released by the Empire Center Thursday. Read More

One in four Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) employees was paid more than $100,000 during 2014, according to payroll data added today to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More

Following the agency’s illegal refusal to turn over basic data, the Empire Center for Public Policy today filed a lawsuit in state Supreme Court in Kings County against the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) over the Authority’s failure to follow the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Read More

State Senate Republicans have issued a news release explaining how they'd like to spend upwards of $3 billion in penalties that will be paid into the state budget's general fund by the French bank BNP Paribas for violating trading sanctions with Cuba, Iran and Sudan. Unfortunately, the Senate's "bold plan" isn't nearly bold enough. Read More

One in seven of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's 71,837 employees took home more than $100,000 last year, according to the Empire Center. "A lot of people make a lot of money at the MTA," said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the think tank that routinely posts public payroll records online. Read More

Nearly 10,500 MTA employees were on the six-figure-salary gravy train last year. More than 14%, or one out of every seven, MTA employees was paid at least $100,000 in 2013, a new report by the Empire Center for New York State Policy found. Read More