It's official: after a decade in which the New York State pension fund's annual return on assets averaged less than half its target rate, the fund will need to jack up its taxpayer-funded contribution rates next year, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today. Read More
Don't look now, but the feds are dropping more cash from helicopters -- and the Empire State is already grabbing a big handful. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sibelius announced yesterday that 2,000 employers throughout the country had applied for a piece... Read More
Is New York state ungovernable? Back in April, Gov. David Paterson seemed to think so. Confounded by the Legislature’s paralysis in the face of a deepening fiscal crisis, the lame-duck governor complained to the Wall Street Journal that New York lacked “a structure that empowers a single leader to get his or her state out of a major conflict.“ Read More
The names and salaries of 186,223 people who worked for New York’s county, city, town and village governments in 2009-10 today were posted in a searchable database at SeeThroughNY.net, the transparency website sponsored by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
The names and salaries of 186,223 people who worked for New York’s county, city, town and village governments in 2009-10 are available at www.SeeThroughNY.net Read More
In 2008, Barrett was paid a total of $1,500 to speak at two separate events in West Virginia, the money coming from federal grants. He was paid a total of $2,850 by the Schenectady school system for four appearances, while also collecting... Read More
Last month, the state-run MTA said that it might raise the price of a 30-day subway and bus pass from today's $89 to $104 -- a pretty hefty 17 percent increase. That's still the case in the MTA's latest on-line literature about fare hearings, too. Read More
New York's state comptroller reportedly is going to reduce the state pension fund's discount rate from 8 percent to between 7.5 percent and 7.75 percent, Bloomberg News just reported. The lower the discount rate, the higher the required tax-funded... Read More