Commentary

Eliot Spitzer was swept into office by a record plurality, surrounded by impossibly high expectations that have already begun to deflate. As if that weren't enough, he was also the first New York governor since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1929 to take office at the peak of an economic expansion - which creates some heightened expectations of its own. Read More

The Rudy Giuliani presidential campaign is running a new radio ad boasting, among other things, that the former mayor "turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion-dollar surplus and cut or eliminated 23 taxes" during his years in City Hall. Read More

Instead of permanently cutting tax rates, New York state is borrowing a gimmick retailers use to avoid cutting prices: the mail-in rebate. The Department of Taxation and Finance is inviting homeowners to apply for a property tax discount. Read More

With prosecutors in vestigating possible criminal misconduct in former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi's management of New York's $155 billion state pension fund, there's talk in Albany about making fundamental changes in the powers of the comptroller's office. Read More

On the heels of a 14 per cent hike in medical- malpractice rates, Gov. Spitzer has directed his insurance superintendent to form a task force to "confront the fundamental drivers" of high medical-malpractice costs. Read More

Eliot Spitzer's first legislative session as governor ended last week with gridlock on some of his top priorities. But while they couldn't agree on campaign-finance and public-construction reform, Assembly Democrats and Senate Republicans were firmly united in their willingness to pander to New York's public-employee unions. Read More

With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Spitzer has cleared the way for 60,000 home-based day-care providers to join New York's growing quasi-public-sector labor cartel. And in the process, on the heels of a first-year budget that increases spending at more than three times the inflation rate, he has further undermined his ability to control the cost of government in the Empire State. Read More

The vagaries of the calendar have extended this year's income-tax filing deadlines to midnight tomorrow, April 17. New Yorkers, especially, can use the extra time to cope with their state's increasingly complex and confusing tax code. Read More

As the $121 billion state budget was heading toward passage late last week, some observers jumped to the conclusion that Gov. Spitzer had conceded too much, too soon in his first negotiations with the Legislature. Read More

GOV. Spitzer and his successor as state attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, both have made some early moves to turn their rhetoric into reality when it comes to expanding the accountability and transparency of government in New York. Read More

While Tuesday's stock market slide was a timely reminder of New York's fiscal vulnerability to external shocks, Eliot Spitzer was already voicing concern about the state's economic prospects during his campaign for governor last fall. Read More

As if New Yorkers didn't already suspect that they're far more heavily taxed than residents of other big cities, the city Independent Budget Office yesterday issued a study proving it more conclusively than ever. Read More