Blog

The Cuomo administration and the state Legislature have begun dishing out grants from a secretive $1.1 billion capital slush fund—all of which will be borrowed money—with no disclosure of project sponsorship or award criteria. Read More

The starting point for computing next year's local property tax cap in most of New York State will be less than 1 percent—and so state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is warning local governments "brace for ... [lower] growth in property tax revenues." DiNapoli's tone clearly implies that a lower tax cap is a negative. But most property owners will no doubt see it another way. Read More

Days after New York formalized its ban on high-volume hydraulic fracturing, a Tioga County business is looking to use a newer method to harvest natural gas from the Utica and Marcellus Shale formations. Read More

The Mercatus Center at Virginia's George Mason University is out with a 50-state ranking that says New York State's "overall fiscal solvency" is among the worst in the nation. The new study suggests that New York's state government finances fall into the "poor" category—ranking 46th, or roughly about as messed up as those of New Jersey (49) and Illinois (50). Read More

The stock market's recent performance suggests that the New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS) had trouble meeting its ambitious 8 percent return target during its most recent fiscal year, which ended a week ago. Read More

In what's becoming annual tradition, a handful of bills increasing pension benefits for groups of public employees passed in New York's Legislature this year. Read More

Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York's legislative majority members would have you believe they have just reached an end-of-session agreement to "cut" your property taxes. Again. Don't believe them. Again. Read More

Based on initial descriptions, the delayed end-of-session "big ugly" package deal announced Tuesday afternoon by Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders is simply confounding on the subject of property taxes. Although Cuomo and Senate Republicans both said they wanted to make the state's 2 percent property tax cap permanent, the cap apparently will be extended only temporarily. Read More

There's a good reason for Governor Cuomo's Fast Food Wage Board to decide against raising the minimum wage for fast food workers: many of them won't benefit from it. Read More

Private-sector job growth in New York continued to trail the U.S. average on a year-to-year basis during the 12 months ending in May, according to the monthly state jobs report from the state Labor Department. Read More

With only hours to go in the state legislative session, are Senate Republicans angling to drill new loopholes in the state's property tax cap? Read More

The Yonkers school district will be the first to get a special added state aid handout from a $100 million "Upstate Distressed Schools Fund" announced over the weekend by Governor Andrew Cuomo. But it's not as if public schools in the City of Gracious Living have been shortchanged. Read More