As if New York's economy wasn't already stressed enough, there's a renewed push in the City Council for a local "living wage" law that could hinder the city's economic renewal while reducing job opportunities for the very people it is supposed to help. Read More
Commentary
The two New Yorks - city and state - were the nation's twin towers of public indebtedness long before the tragic events of Sept. 11 placed extraordinary new strains on their budgets. Read More
One welcome change in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's preliminary budget is a more accurate count of New York City's enormous municipal workforce. It turns out there are even more city employees than anyone previously thought -- ironically underscoring just how little Mayor Bloomberg is initially proposing in the way of agency workforce reductions, despite all the talk of budgetary "pain." Read More
Will city leaders use 9/11 as an excuse to saddle future taxpayers with debt to close part of next year's $4 billion budget gap? Read More
Much of Gov. Pataki's proposed state budget (his costly expansion of health care, in particular) is a far cry from the leaner, cleaner fiscal plans of his first term. But in at least one crucial respect, New York's revenue shortfall has prompted a welcome return to his budgetary roots: For the first time in seven years, the governor is launching a concerted effort to reduce the size of the state work force. Read More
Overshadowed by his predecessor for most of an all-too-brief transition period, Michael Bloomberg has emerged into the mayoral spotlight with an impressive early show of fiscal leadership. Read More
One of first things Mayor Bloomberg needs to do is to disabuse himself of the notion that the city's budget gap is mainly "a revenue problem," as he put it soon after the election. Yes, revenue projections have fallen sharply in the wake of the World Trade Center attack. But the city faced a budget gap even pre-9/11 - and the fundamental reason is spending. Read More
New York City's severe post-9/11 fiscal crunch has prompted fresh calls in some quarters for reinstating the city's commuter tax, which could generate as much as $500 million, to help close a projected budget gap of $3.5 billion. Read More
Just before the attack on the World Trade Center, Mike Bloomberg said he couldn't "prudently promise" not to raise city taxes, "because you can't see the future." Read More
Some members of New York's congressional delegation seem obsessed with worry that President Bush won't deliver every penny of the $20 billion in disaster relief he promised to the city in the wake of Sept. 11. Read More
Will the next mayor restore New York's battered, post-9/11 economy? The candidates' recovery plans don't inspire much confidence. Most of Mark Green's answers come out of the 1930s. And while Michael Bloomberg seems to have learned a few lessons from the '90s, he's still reluctant to embrace the most growth-oriented elements of the Giuliani philosophy. Read More
New York State's decision to roll the dice on more Indian casinos, video gaming and Powerball is ultimately expected to pump another $1 billion into the state treasury annually, but the inevitable court challenge may delay that payoff for several years. In the meantime, the state clearly faces a very real downturn in its economy and revenues. Read More