The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and the stakes couldn’t be higher for New York’s politically powerful public-sector unions. Read More
Tag: Courts
New York’s property tax cap has survived a legal challenge from the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) for the second time in six months. Read More
The complete 2014 New York state government payroll is now posted on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government spending transparency website. Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy is seeking to intervene in a lawsuit initiated by New York City firefighter unions in an attempt to block the release of pension recipients’ names alongside individual pension benefit amounts. Read More
Public-sector labor unions dodged a bullet Monday when the US Supreme Court refrained from overturning laws that force government employees in many states to pay fees to unions they don’t want to join. Read More
The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) litigation of 1993-2006 established the principle that New York State is constitutionally obligated to ensure funding of a “sound, basic education” for pupils in New York City schools. Today, the state’s highest court cleared the way for a lawsuit claiming that funding levels for about a dozen of New York’s small city school districts doesn’t meet that requirement. Read More
New York’s highest court has just ruled—not for the first time—that Article VII, Section 8.1 of the State Constitution does not mean what it seems to say in prohibiting gifts and loans of state money “to or in aid of any private corporation or association, or private undertaking.” Read More
We pointed out last week that the Judiciary has been failing to do its part to help the state reduce expenses during a severe fiscal crisis. Today, the New York Post reports the state Office of Court Administration is spending $23 million to renovate... Read More