Blog

America's muni-bond market takes criticism from several fronts. Because the market's tax benefits are valuable mostly to high-net-worth individuals, its pool of potential investors is limited. Pension funds, endowments, and other investors already ex Read More

As the projected operating deficit at the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority increases by as much as $650 million, to nearly $2 billion, MTA board members have gone to Albany today to continue their lobbying for the Ravitch plan. The Read More

An enormous income tax hike proposed by some New York lawmakers with backing from a coalition of public-sector labor unions would cost the state at least 22,000 private-sector jobs, according to a new analysis issued by the Manhattan Institute's . Read More

Avi Schick, head of the Empire State Development Corp. for 2007 and 2008, in today's Daily News. He wants to use our taxpayer-guaranteed state and city pension funds to prop up the teetering local construction and commercial-real estate i Read More

"The prospects of an early agreement between [New York City] and its bankers on an economy program ... to avert payroll and interest defaults ... remained doubtful yesterday. "While the city and its bankers, with Governor Lehman sitting in, were str Read More

Macquarie Infrastructure Group, partner in the long-term Indiana Toll Road "public-private partnership," . The document illustrates how much riskier the market perceives such deals to be. The details once again point up the fact, then, that such lo Read More

With more than $200 billion in federal stimulus money going directly to states, one might think that the feds were done bailing out the not-so-thrifty of the fifty (plus Puerto Rico). Municipal Market Advisors, which studies the state and l Read More

The Times offers that a couple hundred million dollars (at least) of for the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority through new bridge tolls and a payroll tax wouldn't actually be new revenue going to the MTA. It would be a ste Read More

In her state of the city address, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just proposed a 15 to 26 percent hike in the city's income-tax rate for mid-six-figure earners and above. Together with a , the idea would bring New York City's top rate to nearl Read More

Just in time to further debunk claims that the wealthy don't pay their "fair share" of New York State taxes, the Assembly Majority Ways and Means staff has issued a pessimistic new assessment of the economic outlook ("bleak") and revenue forecast (si Read More

Gotham Gazette has launched a new game: "." It presents almost infinite choices on how to cut city spending, as well as every politician's favorite proposed tax hike and how much money it could raise or not. The game is useful not only for the pure f Read More

Over at , Larry Littlefield has posted a of "the issue no one wants to talk about" — i.e., the extent to which state and federal tax policies favor the old over the young. Read More