The awful outlook for public pension funds is the subject of in the Washington Post, helpfully linked by of the American Enterprise Institute. Read More
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New York State's tax receipts were down 7.7 percent in September compared to the same month in 2008, according to from the state Department of Taxation and Finance. In virtually every major category, the tax numbers were below the trends forecas Read More
Two weeks ago, a Transport Workers Union (TWU) flier promised "Transit Wide Protests" against the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) for next week's Oct. 14 "day of outrage." That poster seems to have disappeared in favor of an u Read More
As E.J. earlier this week, Gov. Paterson is taking a "minimalist" approach to the $2.1 - 3 billion deficit that is starting to yawn in the current budget, suggesting only $500 million worth of cuts (many of which were quickly criticized by state leg Read More
The Empire Center has posted payroll records for 121,961 custodians, bus drivers, aides, secretaries and other non-professional public school employees on their transparency site, . A full release is available , and a chart detailing the 100 hig Read More
As the MTA slashes its station clerks, tourists are lost, customers with luggage or baby carriages can't get through the "Iron Maiden" turnstiles, and New Yorkers have to wait in long lines as all of the confused people in front of them try to go thr Read More
The Institute for Justice, which argued the landmark Kelo case before the Supreme Court nearly five years ago, has a new out that calls New York "perhaps the worst state in the nation when it comes to eminent domain abuse -- the forcible ac Read More
It took a state-appointed financial control board to freeze salaries of Buffalo city employees, but once the 38-month freeze ended, employees argued they should be elevated to higher salary steps they would have achieved if there not been a freeze. In a case that should be watched by other financially squeezed municipalities, the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority will ask the state Court of Appeals to overturn lower court decisions granting higher steps to employees (here). Read More
Former New York Liberal Party boss Ray Harding pleaded guilty yesterday in the ongoing and on-growing Albany pension-fund-hedge-fund corruption scandal, admitting that he "accepted more than $800,000 in exchange for doing favors for Alan G. Hevesi, Read More
Governor Paterson today that he was ordering state agencies to cut their budgets by $500 million to help in dealing with a current-year state deficit of between $2.1 billion (the official forecast as of late July) and $3 billion (the governor's own Read More
, Nicole spotlights the troubling implications of the hot-and-heavy political love affair between City Comptroller (and would-be mayor) William Thompson and Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union (TWU). Her bottom line: New Yorkers ne Read More
A toll road built nearly a decade ago under an innovative public-private partnership model is seeing its financial woes deepen. The problems of the Connector 2000 toll road project in South Carolina are yet another sign that it's going to be hard Read More