DESPITE the improving national and regional economy, New York City's budget remains stuck in a hole. With operating expenses momentarily in check, the city's continuing fiscal imbalance stems mainly from big projected increases in the cost of Medicaid, debt service, employee health benefits - and, seemingly out of nowhere, pension contributions. Read More
Commentary
Is Westchester County racially segregated? That’s the premise of the landmark legal settlement that, if approved by the Board of Legislators, will have the county build some 750 units of affordable housing in high-income areas. Read More
Barely three months after the state Legislature approved a $2.3 billion package of tax and fee hikes to bail out the financially troubled Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), members of the MTA's largest union have been awarded a pay increase that will break the authority's tenuously balanced budget. Read More
Well, what do you know? After raising taxes on high-income households by up to 31 percent, New York state is collecting far less income tax than it had anticipated just a few months ago. Read More
Talk about ingratitude. Some of New York’s top labor leaders are making it known that they may not support the reelection of David Paterson, long one of their most steadfast allies in Albany. Read More
New York's economy and tax base, already sagging in a deep recession, would take another huge hit under Rep. Charles Rangel’s plan to impose a surtax on high-income households to finance a new government-run health plan. Read More
Before staggering away from Albany last week, the state Senate delivered a pleasant surprise for taxpayers -- rejecting a well-intentioned but badly designed bill that would have allowed the state and local governments to borrow billions from the state pension system while potentially compounding financial risks for generations to come. Read More
New York’s public-pension system has become the epicenter of an in fluence-peddling scandal that has at tracted the attention of the SEC as well as state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But the millions in shady “placement fees” pocketed by a few politically connected middlemen are small change compared with the mushrooming cost of lavish pension benefits for state and local government retirees. Read More
Wall Street’s woes leave the state no choice but to slash spending. David Paterson took the oath as governor of New York on March 17, 2008, succeeding the disgraced Eliot Spitzer on the same day that Bear Stearns collapsed. Read More
A year ago this week, Gov. David A. Paterson announced his support for a broad cap on school property taxes across New York - the key recommendation of a tax relief commission chaired by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi. Read More
New York state’s pension system lost 26 percent on its investments and shrunk by a net $45 billion in fiscal 2008-09, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli disclosed last week. Read More
Gov. Paterson seems to have a bad case of amnesia on the issue that once identified him most strongly with New York taxpayers’ interests. Just less than a year ago, Paterson endorsed a blue-ribbon commission’s recommendation for a broad and comprehensive cap on the growth of local school-tax levies -- the single largest factor in sky-high property taxes outside New York City. Read More