If lawmakers reject a separate bill furloughing 100,000 state workers for one day during the week of May 10, Governor David Paterson is prepared to package the measure as part of a budget extender bill, forcing legislators to risk shutting down state... Read More
Salaries of school superintendents in the Buffalo region have outpaced inflation during the past decade, according to the Buffalo News (here). Pay for all but one school superintendent in Erie and Niagara counties outpaced inflation, in most cases... Read More
Salaries of school superintendents in the Buffalo region have outpaced inflation during the past decade, according to the Buffalo News (). Pay for all but one school superintendent in Erie and Niagara counties outpaced inf Read More
As reported in today's Wall Street Journal, the state may re-enter the short-term credit markets for the first time in two decades in order to cover a cash shortfall in June. The possibility was first raised in a forum at the Rockefeller Institute... Read More
Things got ugly in Buffalo where the teachers union faced a choice: protect jobs of younger teachers or safeguard an unusual perk--face lifts, breast enhancements and other cosmetic surgery--financed by Buffalo taxpayers. In the cold calculus of union leadership... Read More
Democrats in the New Jersey Legislature--as well as the state's new Republican governor--are giving a cold shoulder to once powerful public employee unions. The unions, "long seen as a potent political force and often depicted as an 800-pound gorilla looming over the Statehouse, are running short.. Read More
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln released her bill for derivatives reform last week. It contains a nugget of good news for state and local taxpayers. The bill would require dealers in the oft-complex business of interest rate and other "swaps," largely... Read More
More than 15,000 Judicial Branch employees apparently are exempt from Governor David Paterson's temporary pay freeze (here). The Albany Times Union reported Tuesday that pay checks of most nonjudicial employees will be fattened with 4 percent... Read More
hile a relatively small number of taxpayers are shouldering the lion's share of the federal, state and city income tax burden, everyone will soon be footing a bigger bill for rising government spending. Nicole explains... Read More
City Comptroller John Liu was asked at a Crain's NY Breakfast last week whether he would favor shifting future municipal employees from a defined-benefit pension system to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution system. His reply, according to Crain's Insider... Read More
... this week, but what the state did with the money it reaped during the bubble(s). Factoids: Between 1993, the year (roughly) before the tech boom started, and 2007, the last year of the credit bubble, New York State personal-income tax collections... Read More
Unions not surprisingly don't like salary freezes, which are increasingly popular with elected officials as the New York state, its municipalities and school districts struggle with red ink. Freezing wages, union officials argue, violates... Read More