When George E. Pataki first became governor in 1994, he made much of his humble origins on a farm in a small Hudson River community. And based on the vote totals, a large majority of New York City residents apparently dismissed him as a country bumpkin—or, at best, a suburban arriviste. Read More
Governor George Pataki and Comptroller Alan Hevesi have agreed to make marginal changes in a proposed refinancing and restructuring of $2.9 billion in bonds to finance part of the state's five-year transportation capital plan. As we noted almost t Read More
Governor Pataki made much of the "historic" Medicaid cost-containment initiatives he persuaded the Legislature to enact as part of this year's New York State budget. But some of his fellow governors have gone beyond mere budget-cutting to seek more f Read More
Albany's penchant for pandering to public employee unions isn't limited to . The Legislature is also going out of its way to lock in generous health benefits for retired government workers.As E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center points o Read More
Amid the hundreds of arcane laws enacted every year in Albany, how's a taxpayer to know which ones actually represent a huge favor to a powerful special interest group - with huge cost implications for the rest of us? Read More
The deal, Hevesi said in , "saves $1.3 billion in the short term by not paying any principal for five years while increasing costs by $1.77 billion in the remaining 15 years." This, he asserted, represents "another case of the State using a Read More
The employer share of pension contributions in New York has risen by more than $3 billion in the last five years, straining taxpayers throughout the state. Yet state legislators this year have passed dozens of bills—and introduced literally hundreds of others—that would further expand the already generous retirement benefits of government workers. Read More
Pension costs for every level of government in New York have been exploding over the past four years -- yet state legislators seem determined to make things worse. Read More