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The idea of freezing wages of public employees has gained bipartisan support and picked up steam in newspaper editorials around the state in recent days. In an op-ed in the Week in Review section of The New York Times, former U.S. Sen. A Read More

The MTA's Jay Walder has , former Bear Stearns managing director, to the authority's chief financial officer post. Problem is -- Foran enabled the creation of a lot of the MTA's problems in the first place. One of the MTA's many disaster areas is wh Read More

Three--no, make that four--members of the Assembly have called on unionized teachers to forego $1 billion in scheduled pay raises to avoid massive layoffs and property tax increases. Forgetaboutit, responds Richard Iannuzzi. Instead the president Read More

In double-barreled editorials, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle argues the state Legislature should freeze state employee salaries--and repeal the Triborough Amendment. No member of the Legislature has introduced a bill to repeal Read More

Senator Chris Dodd's financial-regulatory includes some of what the press calls the "Volcker Rule" (p478): banning FDIC-insured banks and their affiliates or parent companies from what's known as "proprietary trading" or betting supposedly safe ban Read More

The state payroll for New York State shrunk by 1,856 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees during a two-year period ending in January 2010. However, despite a hiring freeze announced by Governor David Paterson in 2008, the state employs more workers t Read More

New York State entities continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel to scare up a few dollars. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will issue $475 million in short-term notes this week. The MTA pledges to repay the debt as soon as it get Read More

Governor David Paterson began his tenure in the spring of 2008 on a promising note by embracing , almost exactly as proposed by the .  But when the Senate actually passed his bill a few months later, he backed off and dropped the issue. Last year, Read More

The outlook for a timely and fiscally responsible New York State budget is as poor as it has ever been at this point in a fiscal year that ends March 31. [caption id="attachment_2489" align="alignright" width="178" caption="We like NY's proactiv Read More

The Town of Islip hit a major road block in its plan to reduce costs of its vehicle fleet: a state administrative law judge ruled 45 workers can keep town-owned vehicles to commute between work and their homes. The ruling--if upheld on appeal by t Read More

During and after the 2001 recession, U.S. states did about $30 billion in deficit financing, S&P says. (That is, they borrowed long-term, restructured existing debt, or securitized stuff with the aim of getting cash immediately for operating spe Read More

The Empire Center has posted payroll records for the 298,247 employees who worked for the State of New York in 2009 on its transparency site, . The full release, including tables listing the 50 highest-paid employees in each branch of state gover Read More