Governor Cuomo today confirmed he’s following through on his State of the State promise to ban finger-imaging of Food Stamp recipients, over the objections of Mayor Bloomberg. Read More
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On Saturday, the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) got the terms of its new $47.5 million contract with the Amalgamated Transit Union, which represents 3,000 bus drivers in Queens and Staten Island. Read More
Forty-nine school districts* were seeking to override the state's new property tax cap in yesterday's school budget votes. Of those, our review of regional media coverage suggests 30 districts* passed an override, while 19 districts voted their budgets down. Seven of the proposed overrides failed to collect even 50 percent of the vote. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s propensity for creating advisory committees, commissions and task forces — more than two dozen in all — is the subject of an article in today’sWall Street Journal Read More
New York will (one presumes) have a new mayor come January 2014. One question for that mayor will be whether he or she chooses the past or the present. Read More
The fact that markets are flat after la crise JPMorgan Chase came to light -- and that JPM stock is down only 7.3 percent as of this writing -- shouldn't be a comfort to anyone. Read More
Former NYC traffic commissioner, ex-cabbie, and all-around legend "Gridlock Sam" Sam Schwartz had an intriguing piece in today's Daily News on "how to fix New York City traffic." Read More
Nicole Gelinas — Manhattan Institute senior fellow, City Journal contributing editor and frequent blogger here — wrote a tough column in the New York Post yesterday, criticizing Governor Cuomo’s nomination of former Governor David Paterson for appointment to an open seat on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board. The choice, Nicole said, was tantamount to “business-as-usual New York" ... Read More
SNL Financial has out analyzing Wall Street firms' latest results, which trickled in last week. One verdict to take away (although the analysts do not directly draw this conclusion): Wall Street could be smaller and more volatile. That's not Read More
Wendy Long, a lawyer who is trying to oust fellow lawyer Kirsten Gillibrand from the Senate, has with a compelling headline: "Financial Regulation is Hurting New York." True enough. But the 70 percent of the details that Long gets wrong eclipse Read More
While New York State’s new property tax cap has a starting point of 2 percent (or the prior year’s average inflation rate, whichever is less), it will vary from school district to school district based on a series of exclusions for capital expenditures, increases in pension costs, and physical additions to the district tax base... Read More
New York State, its local governments and its public authorities have promised their employees well over $200 billion in future retiree health benefits that no money is set aside to pay for, as we documented in our “Iceberg Ahead” report in late 2010. This unfunded liability translates into an enormous and growing debt that current and past generations of taxpayers have pushed onto future generations. Read More