Blog

Is Wall Street roaring back — as a revenue-generating force for New York’s insatiable state and city governments, that is? You might get that impression from glancing at today’s press release from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, which headlines the finding that the average bonus for securities industry employees in New York “grew by 15 percent to $164,530 in 2013, which is the largest average bonus since the 2008 financial crisis, and the third highest on record.” Read More

Is Wall Street roaring back — as a revenue-generating force for New York’s insatiable state and city governments, that is? You might get that impression from glancing at today’s press release from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli... Read More

As if $420 million in annual handouts to the film and television industries wasn’t enough, New York State legislators are now proposing to give millions to the music industry and Broadway. Read More

Despite the not-rosy fiscal status of the county, the Suffolk County Legislature approved the last outstanding contract for county police officers. (In January, Moody’s listed Suffolk County among the municipal bond issuers facing a credit rating downgrade.) Read More

New York State added private jobs at a slower pace than the nation as a whole during the 12-month period ending in January, according to data released today by the state Labor Department. Read More

New York State added private jobs at a slower pace than the nation as a whole during the 12-month period ending in January, according to data released today by the state Labor Department. Read More

Gov. Cuomo today announced yet another enormous state tax subsidy for the entertainment industry — this time for Disney and Netflix to produce a live-action Internet TV series based on Marvel Comics superheroes in New York City. Read More

Gov. Cuomo today signed a bill that further distances him from the longstanding state policy of tying strong oversight strings to deficit bonding requests from fiscally troubled local governments. Read More

In an apparent concession to construction trade unions, one of Governor Cuomo’s 30-day budget bill amendments would effectively require use of project-labor agreements (PLAs) on “design-build” infrastructure contracts of more than $10 million. This raises the likelihood that savings made possible by the use of the design-build method will be undermined by the imposition of PLAs, which favor less efficient union labor. Read More

Anyone with a “permanent place of abode” in New York is required by law to pay income taxes to the state — and to New York City, as well, if the “abode” is there. But if you’re an out-of-state resident who sets up and maintains a rent-free home for your parents in New York, does that make you a New York resident, too? Read More

An article in The New York Times today touts NBC’s “significant investment” in a state-of-the-art studio at 30 Rockefeller Center for “Tonight” and its new host, Jimmy Fallon. But the article never mentions who’s footing a chunk of the bill for Tonight’s move back to New York from California: the taxpayers of New York State. Read More

Governor Andrew Cuomo is pushing the broadest and most concerted facility downsizing effort by any New York governor in recent history, as noted here last summer. In addition to prison closures and consolidations, the governor has proposed shutting down nine psychiatric centers for the acutely mentally ill, consolidating a new institutional network of “Regional Centers of Excellence,” and shifting more of the Office of Mental Health (OMH) budget to”community-based” services. Read More