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The cost of New York State's Medicaid program, which already spends twice as much per recipient as the national average, will still be rising at a double-digit pace if the Legislature enacts the latest round of mid-year "cuts" proposed by Governor Pa Read More

"The current global financial market crisis could have serious implications for New York’s local governments if access to the credit markets remains constrained," says a issued today by the office of state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Read More

My in today's New York Post gives Governor Paterson credit for his continuing "straight talk" on budget issues.   As for the , on the other hand: Unfortunately, for all the doomsday headlines and special-interest caterwauling Read More

India's current plight shows why it's not a good idea for any local or state government in America to think it can depend on private-public partnerships to fund its infrastructure construction projects once it's out of municipal-borrowing capacity (o Read More

Today's Times has an about the city's efforts to lure more of the biotech industry to New York by subsidizing real estate in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It inadvertently makes the case for across-the-board tax cuts. Read More

Governor Paterson will propose a mid-year cut in state aid to public schools as part of a $2 billion budget reduction package to be released tomorrow. Here's a chart that provides some perspective on the budgetary debate ahead: [caption id="at Read More

The Wall Street Journal has run my op-ed on the risks New York City faces in its approach to fiscal and economic problems. The thesis is that the city's main economic engine -- Wall Street and the financial-services industry -- cold be at th Read More

Yesterday, another New York art auction went , with a Christie's sale bringing in $146.7 million against a "low" estimate of $240.7 million. "Of the 82 works for sale, 36, or more than 40 percent, of the auction went unsold," the Times repo Read More

In the of today's , a Canadian takes aim at New York City's sky-high corporate tax burden: The effective combined U.S. federal, New York State and New York City tax rate of roughly 46% to 47% that corporations pay on their New York City Read More

IBM chief Sam Palmisano gave a to the Council on Foreign Relations today in which he proposed a private-public "smart systems"-led recovery for the economy. Read More

Governor Paterson's projects that New York State will lose more than 160,000 jobs during "the current downturn."   But if history is any guide, that could turn out to be very optimistic.   As illustrated below, the state lost 500,000 private sec Read More

Today, Mayor Bloomberg held his mid-year budget update at City Hall. Here is the big picture: The mayor is still planning for a severe but temporary downturn in revenues. But there's a very real risk -- one that went unmentioned by the mayor Read More