Commentary

Echoing the bayou hunters in the reality show “Duck Dynasty,” Gov. Cuomo said last week that he’s “hap, hap happy” with his new budget. But there are at least five reasons for New Yorkers in general to be less cheerful about the state spending plan for fiscal 2013-14, which starts today. Read More

Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature reportedly are cooking up something like areprise of their December 2011 “tax reform” charade — which combined a $2.5 billion tax hike for million-dollar earners with small income-tax cuts for middle-class households. Read More

Gov. Cuomo is cruising toward his third consecutive on-time state budget, which will no doubt be cited as further evidence that a new era of fiscal responsibility has dawned in Albany. Yet the governor hasn’t turned his back on budget gimmickry. Read More

Police and firefighter unions in New York have reaped a bonanza from the state law allowing them to insist on binding arbitration of their contract impasses. Read More

Former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch, who died this week at 88, exemplified two extremes of budget politics in America’s largest city. When he was elected mayor in 1977, New York was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Read More

The state's largest public union is right. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to "smooth" pensions for local governments and school districts is "a bait-and-switch scheme ... that will allow public employers to underfund their pension obligations," as the Civil Service Employees Association described it last week. Read More

A few days before his latest state budget presentation, Gov. Cuomo did his best to dampen expectations that it would produce any surprises, telling The Post’s Fred Dicker: “I’m going to be taking it as more of an opportunity for what we can be doing affirmatively, but there’s not going to be any major problems revealed.” Read More

From New York’s standpoint, the best that can be said of last week’s federal tax hike is that it could’ve been worse. Taxes on the wealthy went up, but “wealthy” was defined as an adjusted gross income starting around $500,000 for married couples, instead of at the $250,000 level favored by President Obama. At least 150,000 New York state households, including small business owners, were thus let off the rate-hike hook — for now, at least. Read More

By the time they near the end of their second year in office, it’s not unusual for first-term governors to shift their focus from tackling problems to taking bows — and Gov. Cuomo certainly has been no exception. Read More

New York’s Medicaid program is now testing, on a small and limited scale, giving people financial incentives and requiring compliance in changing their behavior. The approach has promise — if done right; it’s important to keep in mind the lessons of welfare reform. Read More

Don’t look now, but a quick deal to sidestep the federal government’s fiscal cliff could end up pushing New York state to the edge of its own precipice. Yet top New York officials seem oblivious to a wave of federal tax hikes due to hit the state’s tax base as soon as next month. Read More

New York operates the largest network of programs for the poor in the nation. It serves more than 5 million Medicaid clients at a cost of $54 billion annually. Read More