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Fresh from a key court victory, Albany's Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC), via its subsidiary, the Brooklyn Arena Local Development Corporation (BALDC), yesterday approved the issuance of up to $800 million in bonds for the construction o Read More

Governor Paterson today that New York State faces "an unprecedented financial emergency," and asked the Legislature to choose between passing his deficit-reduction plan or granting him a new "executive option" to cut the budget unilaterally.  But t Read More

Josh Barro of Manhattan Institute has a strong at RealClearMarkets digging more deeply into the Rockefeller Institute's on quarterly state tax collections.  Key take-away: "states without income taxes are generally showing admirable (and unsurpris Read More

City of Poughkeepsie cops aren't getting a pay raise in 2009--a decision likely to raise local property taxes for decades to come. In exchange for no raises in 2009, the city agreed to pay 100 percent of health insurance costs for police officers Read More

On the surface, New York doesn't look too bad in Rockefeller Institute's on tax trends in the 50 states.  Albany's tax receipts in the third quarter declined by 8.9 percent, compared to a national average of 10.7 percent, the report says.  New York Read More

It like Chicago's parking-privatization deal was a bad deal for the city and a good deal for Morgan Stanley, the concessionaire. Under the 2008 deal, Morgan Stanley bought the rights to the city's parking-meter revenue for 75 years -- including the Read More

"If there is no action taken by the state [of New York] to close the [budget] gap, or if action is taken but is largely-one-time in nature (therefore increasing the structural imbalance in the outyears), and revenue collections in January are close t Read More

A few thoughts on the late-breaking Albany deal to pass the so-called , now stalled for good reason in the Senate after passing in the Assembly: Not for the first time, some of New York's well-meaning are being suckered by a bill title.  Like most Read More

New York's judges haven't gotten a pay raise in nearly 12 years, but some are taking advantage of a legal loophole allowing them to continue to draw their salaries while collecting a pension. For example, 68-year-old State Supreme Court Justice Or Read More

Some awful ideas just keep turning up. Take, for example, the old state and city stock transfer tax.  The last vestiges of the tax were effectively phased out in 1981, although technically survives due to a weird tax law quirk whose repeal has b Read More

Comptroller Bill Thompson just released a quarterly staff with some good economic and fiscal data for New York City. Personal income tax withheld were down 7.2 percent in the third quarter (which ended in September) relative to the Read More

held a good debate last night on whether or not President Obama's economic policies are working. The participants -- three for the president's policies, three against -- focused a big part of their discussion on what the White House has done about Read More