During his first six months in office, New York governor Andrew Cuomo pulled off something of a fiscal trifecta: closing a $10 billion state-budget gap without raising taxes, capping local-property-tax levies, and wringing concessions out of state-go Read More
Commentary
If there’s one thing the Occupy Wall Street crowd agrees on, it’s that New York should expand its “millionaire tax” on high-income earners. Read More
Gov. Cuomo’s operations chief yesterday was quick to blast the leadership of the Public Employees Federation for “failing to effectively communicate the benefits” of a tentative contract deal that PEF members voted overwhelmingly to reject. Read More
The Port Authority toll-hike outrage is a signal to Govs. Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie, who control the agency for New York and New Jersey: The Downtown reconstruction project is consuming tolls that should go to bridge and tunnel work, not to real estate. Read More
When the New York State and Local Pension fund announced last month that it had earned 14.6 percent on investments this fiscal year, a top NY union official said the robust returns “call into question the need for so-called “pension reform.” Since then, however, the Standard & Poor’s 500 has dropped about 13 percent. Read More
The cover of New York state's latest budget update features a photo taken from within a Central Park tunnel, looking out toward a path curving up a gentle incline through a verdant landscape. Read More
The governor who led New York State out of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s died Sunday at the age of 92. Read More
New York has always paid its pension bills on time," state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said recently. We've heard that boast from the comptroller before. Unfortunately, that's only technically true. Under a 2010 budget provision championed by DiNapoli himself, the state is now delaying payment of significant portions of its pension bills. Read More
A bid to gut Cuomo’s tax cap The passage of a 2 percent cap on local property-tax growth in New York should have been the crowning achievement of Gov. Cuomo’s first legislative session -- complementing an austere budget to set a more fiscally responsible tone for the Empire State. Read More
With less than two weeks to go before the start of New York City’s 2012 fiscal year, Mayor Bloomberg insists he must eliminate 6,100 teaching positions and close 20 fire companies to balance the next city budget. Read More
In his opening message to the Legislature, Gov. Andrew Cuomo pointed out that public-pension costs are “exploding” across New York state. Read More
One day after seeming to agree to an acceptable compromise on Gov. Cuomo’s proposed 2 percent cap on property-tax levies, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver yesterday seemed to be sticking a poison pill in the fine print. Read More