New York City and other government entities should begin to “proactively” disclose payrolls, expenditure information and other public records on the Internet, according to testimony before the City Council today by Tim Hoefer, operations director of the Manhattan Institute’s Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
Promoting better transparency and accountability in government is one of the Empire Center’s major, ongoing priorities. Read More
An advocacy group for subway riders is blaming budget reductions for dirtier conditions on New York subway cars. "It’s as clear as the grime on a subway car floor: MTA Transit cuts in cleaners has meant dirtier cars.. Read More
Bloomberg (the news, not the mayor) reports that the state of Illinois must pay 40 percent more than it did two months ago to borrow money in the bond markets (relative to supposedly risk-free Treasury bonds). Illinois' new 25-year, $300 million... Read More
A searchable database of pension allowances for 342,543 retired New York state and local government employees was posted today on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency website. Read More
New York's slow growth during the past decade is reflected in newly released Census Bureau data showing that the Empire State ranked 48th out of 50 states in the creation of new housing units from 2000 to 2009. As illustrated in the chart below... Read More
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