THE House of Representatives this week is expected to pass a federal stimulus package that could pump at least $17 billion of noncapital funding directly into New York's state and local government coffers over the next two years. Read More
Commentary
Now that they control both houses of the New York State Legislature, Democrats in Albany are reportedly preparing to raise the state income tax on high-income New Yorkers to help plug a $15 billion budget gap. Read More
New York's huge budget deficit—$15.4 billion in the next 15 months—will force difficult choices in terms of government services and tax policies for years to come. To engage intelligently in that debate, New Yorkers need far more information than we now receive from Albany. Read More
In his first annual address to legislators last week, Gov. David A. Paterson said, "The state of our state is perilous." Yet his energy platform promises to visit more peril upon the Empire State. Read More
The media treated it as good news when the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union said last week that they'd settle their next contract through binding arbitration. Read More
Say this much for the "mobility tax": Unable or unwilling to find more cash in operational savings, capital cuts, or the farebox, the Ravitch Commission apparently tried to find the least-awful way to raise another $1.5 billion for the MTA. Read More
The most noteworthy aspect of Gov. Pater son's news conference yesterday wasn't the detailed breakdown of his $2 billion in proposed changes to close a projected shortfall in the current state budget. Read More
New York City government has barely begun to bring its spending into line with post-meltdown reality—and Council Speaker Christine Quinn is already saying "we'll need to look at personal income-tax changes," among "other ideas," for closing budget gaps that are likely to swell beyond $8 billion over the next two years. Read More
New York's deepening fiscal crisis should refocus public attention on the need to reform the city's unsustainably costly package of generous retirement benefits for municipal workers. Read More
The financial-market implosion and the coming transformation of the securities industry pose a risk to the national economy. But they especially imperil New York State, which for decades has built its budgets on the expectation of raising ever-greater revenues from a Wall Street that now no longer exists. Read More
The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and yesterday's 500- point drop in the Dow may yet prove to be the turning point in a long-overdue shakeout. If the optimists are right, a stronger and smarter securities industry will eventually emerge from the ruins of the last few months. Read More
Earlier in this decade, the last major change in federal tax policy helped bail New York out of its last Wall Street downturn. Will Washington help or hurt the city this time around? Read More