Commentary

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

The state-funded portion of Spitzer's $121 billion Executive Budget (excluding federal aid) calls for a spending hike of 7.8 percent - three times the projected inflation rate for the state's 2007-08 fiscal year, which begins April 1. Read More

Looking ahead to the first budget of his administration, Governor Spitzer pledged earlier this month to "make hard choices and begin to fundamentally reform and restructure programs that have become needlessly expensive" and to "say ‘no' to budget requests we simply cannot afford." Read More

Attacking Albany's complicity in "the unchecked growth of pensions" for New York employees, Mayor Bloomberg last week said it was high time the city gained more direct control of its own retirement benefits. Read More

Gov. Spitzer won't present his first Executive Budget for another four weeks, but the essence of New York's financial situation could be distilled from three sentences in his first State of the State Address yesterday Read More

When George Pataki took office as governor in January 1995, New York state was only feebly recovering from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Pataki wanted to jump-start the economy with lower taxes — but he also had inherited a $5 billion state budget shortfall from Mario Cuomo. Read More

By the time they lost the House and Senate last month, it had been years since congressional Republicans collectively exhibited the kind of energy, discipline and commitment to principle that produced their most enduring achievement - the welfare-reform law of 1996. Read More

Yesterday's state Court of Appeals ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) case is a victory for judicial restraint and common sense. Needless to say, it's also a huge break for Eliot Spitzer: Now he won't have to take office as governor under the shadow of a financially backbreaking judicial mandate. Read More