Local governments are not racing to adopt the state's early retirement incentive, which would help trim their payrolls while increasing their pension costs. In St. Lawrence County, officials have advised county legislators to vote against offering... Read More
E.J. and I had a podcast chat this morning to run through some of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA)'s 2009 payroll data, released last week by the Empire Center's seethroughny.net. The data show that last year, the MTA's 74,708 workers... Read More
Taxpayers pay an average of $39.81 per hour to employ state and local government workers nationwide. That's $12 per hour more than total compensation costs for private-sector employees... Read More
Local media has picked up on the NYC Independent Budget Office's blog post on the precipitous drop in wages in New York's securities industry in 2009. The get-it-over-with-fast drop mightn't have been such a bad thing for the city -- if local, state... Read More
Most news coverage of yesterday's budget vote reflected the approach of today's New York Times headline: "Albany Lawmakers Pass Big Cuts in Health Care." In fact, net of those cuts, the state-funded share of Medicaid spending will increase this year... Read More
Erie County workers vote this week on a tentative contract giving them a 15 percent raise over five years in exchange for eliminating paid retiree health insurance for future hires, as well as requiring a 50 percent contribution for recent hires. Read More
The House has passed the White House's request for an extension of the Build America Bond program 'till 2012, and the Senate is getting there. Just what state, local, and the federal government need: more "cheap" debt, thanks to an implicit federal... Read More
New York has the worst economic outlook of any state in the nation, according to the latest index of the economic competitiveness issued by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Read More