Blog

The city of Detroit lost its investment-grade credit rating from S&P Tuesday night, slipping to BB after just barely hanging on to a halfway decent rating for the past two decades. New York is not Detroit. But since one of Detroit's major problem Read More

Over at NY Public Payroll Watch, E.J. McMahon  Gov. Paterson and others for allowing the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority to abdicate one of its main responsibilities -- negotiating a better contract with the New York City local Tr Read More

The Empire Center's SeeThroughNY.net offers a new trove of payroll data on the city and public-authority governments. An analysis of the data shows how top-heavy New York City's public-sector payroll is compared to at least one other relevant downst Read More

Thousands of union members will gather in Albany today to demonstrate against Governor Paterson's proposed state budget cuts, and most of them will no doubt be pushing organized labor's soak-the-rich income tax hike as an alternative.  But Steve Kag Read More

New York City is  record tourist travel to New York for this year. But broken down by quarter (numbers exclusively reported by FiscalWatch for the moment, although anyone can ask the city for them), the figures tell a more sober story. Read More

Of next year's expected $700 billion federal infrastructure stimulus package, New York state likely will get $4 billion for mass transit, with most of that money going toward city projects, including a second station on the planned extension westwa Read More

State comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, in a quest to become the Ghost of New York City Yet to Come, released his on the city's budget yesterday. The document illustrates starkly what is going to happen in New York if we do not face the inevitable. We'v Read More

Smart private-sector companies are aggressively slashing white-collar pay and benefits to get costs under control amid slumping revenues. New York's public sector, by contrast, has no such clear, assertive plan, even though the state* and the MTA to Read More

New York lost another 126,209 residents to other states during the 12 months ending July 1, according to newly released .  The Empire State's loss to "net domestic migration" has reached 1,575,864 people since 2000 -- the most of any state's, toppin Read More