Governor Cuomo’s 2012-13 budget, to be presented later today, will command media attention for the rest of the week. Advance reports on his modified pension reform proposal are especially promising. Meanwhile, there’s a (fiscally) cost-free approach to helping local governments and school districts alleviate their budget problems: repealing the Triborough Amendment. Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's latest ed-reform plan has attention. To get the teachers' union to support merit pay, Bloomberg proposes to give teachers a salary hike of $20,000 if they prove "highly effective" for two years in a row under a new teacher-eval Read More
Mayor Michael Bloomberg has joined Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in advocating an increase in the state minimum wage. Unlike Silver, Bloomberg in his State of the City message was at least willing to acknowledge that the minimum wage discourages hiring–specifically, that it “can reduce youth employment.” His solution? Read More
Let's make a deal - you give me $650 today, and five years from now I'll give you $10,000 back. That incredible return on investment is what some forward-thinking federal agencies are taxpayers, according to the National Archives and Records Admin Read More
The MTA prefers to bargain in secret, but the Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 has a list of what it says are the MTA's demands for the next three-year contract for New York City subway and bus workers. The current contract expires next Sunday Read More
In a just-completed radio interview, Governor Andrew Cuomo talked a little more about his State of the State announcement last week concerning a proposed new convention center at Aqueduct Raceway in Queens. But Cuomo’s answers raised a few other questions. Read More
Little-noticed in the continued over Gov. Cuomo's proposed gambling-conventioneering complex in Queens is the mass-transit part of it. Genting, the company that Cuomo favors, has produced a fact sheet on its "New York Convention and Exhibition Ce Read More
In addition to , Speaker Sheldon Silver this week that the Assembly will seek to reduce state taxes on the working poor. Specifically, Silver said: Under our plan, working families who earn less than $30,000 annually will see their inco Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo floated quite a few dubious ideas in his State of the State address yesterday, a couple of which are the subject of my Newsday column today—but the most dubious proposal of all came from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in his own brief remarks before the governor spoke. Read More
Why is New York City comptroller John Liu trivializing government by inserting it into a petty dispute between entertainment giants? Yesterday, Liu put out a showing that he's ready to fight for New Yorkers who face a grave crisis: "nearly 2 mill Read More
Trying to rein in runaway Medicaid spending is an historic annual event in New York. Governor Cuomo's Medicaid Redesign Team was assigned the most recent task of both reducing spending and increasing the quality of care. Read More
Interrupting a relentless stream of negative stories about natural gas hydrofracking in the Northeast, The New York Times notices that gas exploration in neighboring Pennsylvania has touched off a boom in New York’s once-languishing Southern Tier. Read More