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
New York State leaders want to leverage the expanded authorization of video-lottery terminals (VLTs) to raise state revenues and to bail out the troubled thoroughbred racing industry. The high stakes inherent in that effort are documented in a new Read More
Two local government officials are promising to introduce resolutions opposing the condemnation of private properties to make way for an industrial park in suburban Syracuse. This marks the first example in New York of official backlash against the recent U.S. Supreme Court's recent Kelo v. City of New London ruling, which adopted a very expansive definition of government's "eminent domain" power to seize private property for economic development projects. Read More