Twenty-nine days past the legal deadline, the Cuomo Administration finally got around to posting the state’s required mid-year financial plan update on the Division of the Budget (DOB) website late yesterday afternoon. As expected, the report does not included an estimate of fiscal impacts from Superstorm Sandy. DOB says it is still working on those numbers. Read More
For a second straight year, Governor Andrew Cuomo has fallen behind the schedule for releasing the required quarterly update to the state financial plan. And for a second straight year, the governor can’t come up with a persuasive reason for the delay. Read More
“Cash-strapped New York has tentatively chosen the highest bidder to produce driver’s licenses under a disputed contract that would provide only black-and-white photos and end up costing the state nearly $38 million more than the current contract if it’s approved,” the AP reports. Read More
The prices of some previously high-flying stocks such as Apple recently have been plummeting, and the stock market has just suffered “its worst week of declines in five months,” the Wall Street Journal reports. This is not good news for savers and investors — but it may be causing sighs of relief in some corners of the state Capitol. Read More
When welfare reform was enacted in 1996, creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, a less-noticed provision was the greatly increased focus on collecting child support for custodial parents (almost always mothers) and their children. Read More
The Food Stamp Program has changed its name to SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- an appropriate moniker, since in current economic conditions, states are making it a snap to qualify. Read More
The MTA deserves kudos tonight. The state-run authority -- workers and management -- is doing a bang-up, even heroic job in getting people between Brooklyn and Manhattan. Read More
The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) has just informed school districts across the state that their teacher pension contribution rates for the 2013-14 school year will rise from the current 11.84 percent to between 15.5 and 16.5 percent of salaries — which would translate into an additional taxpayer costs totaling $539 million to $686 million, based on the latest available teacher payroll figures. Read More
“Frankenstorm” could easily inundate the tenuously balanced budgets of New York State, New York City and countless other localities in the storm’s path... Read More
In a battle going back 15 years, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has pledged to reduce Medicaid reimbursements to New York for the state's developmentally disabled centers by as much as 80 percent. Daily rates per patient at the facilities had jumped from just over $1,700 in 1999 to over $5,100 by 2011. Read More
The combined state and local tax burden on New York residents in 2010, the year before Governor Andrew Cuomo took office, reached its highest level since 1994, the last year his father held the same office, as measured by data released today by the Tax Foundation... Read More
If you ever find yourself wondering why some of the infrastructure in America’s largest and richest city seems so inadequate, you need look no farther than the southern tip of Manhattan for part of the answer. Read More