You might think the union representing New York teachers would not favor weakening the source of its members’ future pensions. But you’d be wrong. Read More
Blog
To no one’s surprise, the statewide teachers’ union today filed suit to overturn New York’s local property tax cap. NYSUT has enlisted some parents of school children as co-plaintiffs, but the chief motive here is obvious: the tax cap is likely to limit future increases in teacher compensation, which is by far the largest category of local school expenditures. Read More
Kathy Marchione, 58, “retired” as Saratoga County Clerk before taking office as a state senator this year. That reportedly qualified her to start collecting a $66,000 pension—the equivalent of a job paying over $70,000 a year, after adjusting for the fact that pensions are not subject to payroll or state income taxes. Which is not too shabby, considering the average private sector pay in the Capital Region was just over $43,000 as of 2011... Read More
Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to wire one-fifth of new parking spaces in New York City for electric vehicles would “force the private sector to build charging stations for a fleet of cars that don’t exist and probably won’t exist for years to come, if ever,” energy analyst Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute writes in today’s New York Post. Read More
The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) has retained Cheiron, an actuarial and financial consultancy with a national practice, to analyze Governor Cuomo’s proposal to give school districts a “flat rate” option for pension contributions. Read More
Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner has drawn attention for a New York Times op-ed criticizing Governor Cuomo’s failure to deliver meaningful mandate relief to troubled localities. The mayor, who is also co-chair of the state Democratic Committee, challenged Cuomo to “use his substantial, hard-earned political capital to convene the Legislature, the state comptroller, and union and business leaders for an honest conversation about the multiple fiscal pressures confronting our cities.” Read More
Stop us if you’ve heard this one: “We know our economy is stronger when we reward an honest day’s work with honest wages. But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year … [A] family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. That’s wrong.” Read More
Politicians from Albany have been complaining for years that the state’s capital city is fiscally strapped because 60 percent of the property within its boundaries, much of it state owned, is tax exempt Read More
Unlike state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who says he’s still thinking it over, one upstate local official has already concluded that Governor Cuomo’s local government pension smoothingproposal would be a bad deal. Read More
Governor Cuomo’s proposed state budget for fiscal 2014 envisions a relatively strong 6.6 percent ($2.6 billion) increase in net personal income tax (PIT) receipts for the year starting April 1, even though the tax so far has under-performed the original budget projections for fiscal 2013. The highest-earning one percent of New York taxpayers is expected to generate 41 percent of net receipts, according to the Economic and Revenue Outlook volume of the budget Read More
The biggest of the almost-new taxes in Governor Cuomo’s “no new taxes” budget is being targeted for elimination by state Senate Republicans. They were joined today by business and industry representatives in calling on Cuomo to remove the extension of the Section 18-A “assessment” from his budget proposal. Read More
Today’s Albany Times Union gives front-page play to a story that has picked up surprisingly little sustained media attention since it was first reported two years ago: since 1990, New York State has ripped off the federal government for billions of dollars in overcharges of Medicaid reimbursements for the developmentally disabled — and the feds want their bucks back. Read More