Just in time for Wall Street’s latest bout of bearish volatility, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is taking an important step to fortify New York’s largest pension fund. Read More
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Bill de Blasio was at a ballgame in Queens last Sunday afternoon when a group of rural landowners, town officials, Second Amendment advocates and Tea Party activists rallied in the Southern Tier village of Bainbridge on behalf of a radical reform that would dramatically enhance the mayor’s power in his own backyard: a breakup of New York state. Read More
If the New York counties north of the New York City metro region were to split off and become a separate state, how would it rank nationally? The question is prompted by news accounts of last weekend's Southern Tier rally by a coalition of groups whose members want upstate to secede from the rest of New York. Not all the advocates favor creation of a separate state, however. Some favor absorption into Pennsylvania, while others suggest avoiding the constitutional hurdles of full statehood by changing New York's own constitution to create two "autonomous regions" within the outline of a "token" remaining single state. In addition, their definitions of "upstate" seem to differ. Read More
The stock market turmoil of the last week is a reminder of why it's risky, verging on foolhardy, for New York's state government to depend as heavily as it does on high-income households and Wall Street investors. In the current fiscal year, taxes paid by the highest-earning 1 percent of New York taxpayers—including commuters to jobs in the state—are expected to generate 43 percent of personal income tax receipts, which in turn translates into 27 percent of total state taxes. Read More
New York's tax climate for key business sectors—with the notable exception of manufacturing—ranks at or near the bottom among 50 states, according to study by the Tax Foundation and the KPMG accounting firm. Read More
On the heels of a sub-par fiscal year, New York State's largest public pension fund has just reported another weak quarter for investment returns. State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli today said the Common Retirement Fund (CRF), of which he is sole trustee, had gained just 0.52 percent during the three months ending June 30, the first quarter of the fund's 2015-16 fiscal year. The CRF finances pension benefits for nearly all non-New York City state and local government retirees, other than educational professionals. Read More
The state Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Empire Center for Public Policy have reached an out-of-court settlement in which the MTA acknowledges its failure to respond “in a timely manner” to the Center’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Read More
New York’s two-year-old Voluntary Defined Contribution (VDC) retirement plan—the most significant structural reform in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2012 Tier 6 pension legislation—is shaping up as a popular alternative among the relatively small number of government employees eligible to sign up for it. The 580 enrollees in the VDC plan between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2015 include at least eight of the 29 state Assembly and state Senate members elected during that period, according to the plan managers at the State University of New York (SUNY). Read More