Are New York's public authorities fixed? Little more than a week ago, Gov. Paterson signed a bill to ." But State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem thinks that the convolutions New York's Empire State Development Corporation (ESDC) put itself through t Read More
New York’s 80-year-old Executive Budget law, rooted in Article VII of the state Constitution, has stood the test of time in many respects. But some glaring holes in the law have become more and more evident over the past couple of decades. As a result, the severity of New York State’s latest fiscal crisis has been compounded by a lack of budgetary discipline, transparency and accountability. Read More
The NYT hosted an online on how to fix the MTA today. Here are some deeper #s: In 2004, MTA labor spending was $5 billion. Today, it's nearly $7 billion. (Look for yourself and .) If it had kept up with inflation between '04 and '09, it Read More
Mayor Bloomberg, enlightenedly governing from Copenhagen via the World Wide Web this week, had the following to say about the dim-bulb, smaller-carbon-footprinted folks back home to CNBC: "I don't think that congestion pricing and thos Read More
A court decision upholding a three-year, 11.5 percent pay raise for New York City transit workers should make local governments elsewhere nervous. State Supreme Court Justice O. Peter Sherwood has upheld an arbitration panel award to the Transport Read More
The U.K.'s Labour Party surprised the world and maybe itself by taking a tough line on City bank bonuses on Wednesday, according to the press, announcing a 50 percent surtax on banks' bonus payrolls through next April. The tax, which the banks the Read More
The price tag for the Legislature's promise of an early retirement incentive for teachers isn't publicly known, but a similar bill would cost school districts $200 million in added pension payments next year. Read More
The state bailed out the MTA with a $1.5 billion payroll tax earlier this year. But it turns out revenues from the payroll tax will come in $200 million less than expected. If only the state and the MTA had had someone back then to tell them that th Read More