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New York's cities, already the most fiscally stressed class of local governments in the state, will be hit especially hard by the next wave of pension contribution increases yesterday by the state comptroller. That's because city payrolls tend to be Read More

Tax-funded employer contributions to the New York State and Local Retirement System will rise sharply in fiscal year 2013, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli today. The rate billed for members of the Employer Retirement System (ERS) will rise to near Read More

Reporting today on New York City's plan to lay off 780 school employees in October, an in The New York Times explains: "The layoffs are a direct consequence of budget cuts to schools, which have occurred in each of the last four years, forci Read More

New York has the second highest-paid state police force in the country, the Gannett News Service (GNS) last week, based on both state payroll and U.S. Census records.  GNS said the average salary for all ranks of state trooper came to $112,000 as o Read More

New York State's tax collections and other receipts during the first four months of the 2011-12 fiscal year were $330 million below projections, according to the July issued yesterday by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.  That dip, he noted, "largely ev Read More

Yesterday's by Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) will help Gov. Cuomo reach his workforce savings targets in a tightly balanced state budget.  Almost as important, Cuomo's with the largest state government union -- including a three-year Read More

“If the plodding national economy stumbles into another recession, New York — plagued by high unemployment and the prospect of a rising tide of layoffs on Wall Street — probably will take a tumble, too.” That’s the main takeaway from an article in today’s New York Times on the outlook for the city’s economy — which, of course, has inevitable implications for all of the Empire State. Read More

Declining bridge and tunnel traffic is one of the factors cited by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as justification for its proposed toll and fare increase, which has met with a predictable reaction from Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. But a closer look at the PA’s original traffic projections suggest they may have been inflated to start with. Read More

The on Wall Street are casting a cloud over New York State's financial projections. Governor Andrew Cuomo's , unveiled in February, assumed stock values would grow this year by 13.4 percent. This assumption was not changed in the Enacted Budget Fina Read More

If New York's state government unions ultimately reject with Governor Andrew Cuomo, the may ultimately deserve part of the blame. Triborough ensures that provisions of a public-sector union contract remain in effect even after the contract expi Read More

When Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last month that New York's state and local pension fund had earned 14.6 percent on its investments in fiscal 2010-11, the AFL-CIO's Dennis Hughes the the comptroller's numbers had "call[ed] into question the need fo Read More

The governor who led New York State out of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s died Sunday at the age of 92. Carey’s last great public service came when he emerged from retirement in 2005 to fight a proposed constitutional amendment weakening New York’s executive budget law. Read More