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The Paterson Administration is backing off on plans to (finally) start collecting taxes on cigarettes sold by American Indian retailers, the Buffalo News .   This will add $65 million in red ink to The decision drew immediate Read More

S&P has a new report out with some calculations surrounding the MTA's forthcoming 2010-2014 capital plan, . The plan is $28 billion, 20 percent bigger than the program for 2005 through 2009. Of the $28 billion, $9.9 billion -- 35 percent --� Read More

Nicole has today on how last week's budget-busting arbitration award to transit workers has underscored the need for more openness in public-sector collective bargaining. If the MTA had had to release details of its generous offers in t Read More

Since last July, inflationprices (including food and energy) are down 2.1 percent for the nation, and 1.1 percent in New York, the BLS . If this rate keeps up for the rest of the year, the Trans Read More

As the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority launched negotiations with the Transport Workers Union last year for a new three-year labor agreement, one of the authority's biggest goals was to win the right to run "one-person trains" -- that Read More

And speaking of the MTA-TWU arbitration, Read More

Adjusting for inflation, the 11.3 percent pay hike awarded by an arbitration panel to Local 100 of the Transport Workers' Union (TWU) this week appears to be the transit workers' biggest score since the disastrously generous contract settlement that Read More

AUTHOR’S NOTE: PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS TO THIS POST IN BOLD.In May, after months of turmoil, Albany agreed to a new package of taxes for the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Aut Read More

As we've said (repeatedly), the new labor contract betwen the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Transport Workers Union, decided by a panel of state arbitrators yesterday, is an outrageous giveaway. But just as outrageous was the s Read More

AUTHOR'S NOTE: PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS TO THIS POST IN BOLD. In May, after months of turmoil, Albany agreed to a new package of taxes for the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MT Read More

Nicole has on the generous contract arbitration award to transit workers.   Her lead sums it up nicely: THE MTA just managed to give away the store in the new Transport Workers Union contract -- and they couldn't have done it without Read More

PolitickerNY that the State Senate, which must approve Gov. Paterson's pick for MTA chief, Jay Walder, will hold hearings this fall that focus on Walder's reputed pay package. Walder's package, in addition to nearly half-million annually in salary Read More