Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has jumped on the bandwagon in favor of raising New York City’s top resident income tax rate — just a day after two undeclared 2013 mayoral candidates, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and then-City Comptroller William Thompson stepped (somewhat gingerly) off it. Read More
New York ranks 50th — meaning “worst” — in the Tax Foundation’s 2013 State Business Tax Index, released today. The Empire State’s ranking tumbled back to last place after climbing all the way up to number 48 in the 2011 Index. Read More
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has her eye on the other half of City Hall. In her current position, she already represents New Yorkers. So why does she feel so powerless that she supports outside action to force the city to do stuff -- when she is the city? Read More
The latest mergers & acquisitions figures are out, and they're not pretty. According to mergermarket, an M&A data watcher, the year's global slowdown is not only continuing but accelerating. New York can hang on to a thread of good news only in that its rate of decline is not accelerating. Read More
The slow-motion process of developing state regulations to allow natural gas hydro-fracking in upstate New York seems to have reached stall speed, now that Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered up a new health impact review that could force the Department of Environmental Conservation to miss a Nov. 29 deadline for issuing fracking rules. Read More
Employment and wage growth between March 2011 and March 2012 was below the national average in most of New York’s largest counties, according to the quarterly census of employment and wages released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics... Read More
The national housing crisis is over.*** New York should worry. Read More
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has announced a “fiscal stress monitoring system” to provide an early warning of problems in local governments and school districts, which can only be a good idea... Read More
Are New York City's public-pension managers running an investment fund -- or an affordable-housing program? Read More
Federal Medicaid reimbursements to New York State could be cut by $1 billion a year to make up for more than two decades of excessive claims that one congressman compared to “fraud.” Read More
Asked what the state might do to help fiscally distressed upstate cities, Governor Cuomo today said his administration was “looking at various approaches to help cities more on an individual basis than on a collective basis.” Read More
State Sen. Tom Libous of Binghamton, deputy leader of the Republican majority in the Legislature’s upper house, has been running a campaign commercial that takes credit for working with Governor Andrew Cuomo to enact, among other things, “the largest middle-class tax cut in 58 years.” Read More