Blog

The story from today’s papers with the biggest potential long-term impact on New York’s economy doesn’t even contain the words “New York.” That’s Gillian Tett’s FT piece on global investors’ assessment of the credit of the United States of America. Read More

Despite the challenge of teaching in an urban school district, Buffalo teachers don’t have to wear their stress on their faces. Their new health benefit package covers cosmetic surgery, courtesy of taxpayers. Read More

While he carefully avoids a flat rejection of the idea, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has been expressing doubts about Governor Eliot Spitzer’s proposal for a cap on school property taxes. Read More

Governor Spitzer's first Executive Budget would raise state spending by up to three times the projected rate of inflation in the fiscal year that begins April 1. Read More

News coverage of Gov. Eliot Spitzer's first State of the State message invariably highlighted his proposal for what has been widely billed as a $6 billion property tax reduction. . . Read More

New York City's current budget is an object lesson in why too much money is just as serious a problem as too little. New York ended the last fiscal year with $3.8 billion more than it expected to spend. . . but while taxpayers historically have borne tax-rate hikes to fund the city's predictable cyclical deficits, they will not see tax cuts due to the current record surplus, unless Mayor Bloomberg takes advantage of this temporary boom time. . . Read More

New York's newly adopted city budget for fiscal 2006 calls for a 7.5 percent spending increase, well above the rate of inflation or growth in the city's economy. Under the four municipal budgets adopted since Michael Bloomberg became mayor in 2002, city spending has risen at more than twice the inflation rate. Relative to New Yorkers' personal income, city operating expenditures in the year ahead will be significantly higher than the average during Rudolph Giuliani's tenure in the mayor's office. Read More

Seemingly oblivious to the already high and rising cost of taxpayer-funded public pensions in New York, state lawmakers this year passed at least 36 measures that would expand pension benefits for groups of public workers. Read More

The New York Stock Exchange's proposed merger with a Paris-based company operating four electronic stock exchanges in Europe could be a sign of trouble for the economic engine of the Empire State. Read More

New York's newly enacted budget calls for the biggest state spending increase in 33 years ­ without even including legislative additions blocked on constitutional grounds by Governor George Pataki. Read More

With school property taxes continuing to rise across New York State, Albany's leading Republicans are pushing for a major expansion of the STAR (School Tax Relief) program in the next state budget. But more STAR spending will do nothing to reduce New York's oppressive state and local tax burden. Instead, it will promote faster growth in school spending and property tax levies unless it is tied to a firm cap on school district budgets or taxes. Read More

With school property taxes continuing to rise across New York State, Albany's leading Republicans are pushing for a major expansion of the STAR (School Tax Relief) program in the next state budget. But more STAR spending will do nothing to reduce New York's oppressive state and local tax burden. Instead, it will promote faster growth in school spending and property tax levies unless it is tied to a firm cap on school district budgets or taxes. Read More