Another month has brought another poor jobs growth report for upstate New York. Today’s Labor Department release shows statewide private employment in February was up 1.6 percent over the same month a year earlier, trailing the national rate of 1.9 percent — a slightly smaller margin than in previous months. Read More
Over at SeeThroughNY, our team works really hard to post fresh data quickly and accurately — when it’s available, that is. Read More
“Why are property taxes so high? Because we have 10,500 local governments,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said yesterday, repeating (yet again) his favorite mantra. Cuomo clearly wants to imply that he’s referring to 10,500 autonomous entities, falling over one another in a virtual orgy of bureaucratic excess. 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, 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