There are a whole lot of ways to close a $4.9 billion gap in a $40 billion budget, as Mayor Bloomberg demonstrated once again this week. He wants to balance the budget without imposing economically devastating tax hikes. Read More
Latest
A majority of City Council members has called on the council leadership to back a city income tax surcharge of up to 55 percent on high-income New Yorkers. This $1.23 billion tax increase would have a devastating impact on the city's economy, leading to the loss of another 48,000 jobs, according to the Manhattan Institute’s tax policy analysis model. It would boost the combined state and city income tax rate to a maximum of 12.5 percent—nearly double the next-highest rate in any neighboring state. Read More
Good afternoon, Chairman Weprin, and thank you for this opportunity to testify before your subcommittee today. My name is Edmund J. McMahon, and I am senior fellow for tax and budgetary studies at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. The M Read More
As if New York's economy wasn't already stressed enough, there's a renewed push in the City Council for a local "living wage" law that could hinder the city's economic renewal while reducing job opportunities for the very people it is supposed to help. Read More
At a time when New York desperately needs to find ways of delivering public services more efficiently, its transit bus operations could prove to be a significant source of recurring savings for the future. The key to unlocking these savings is competition—an essential spur to improved performance and efficiency that’s been missing from transit in New York for most of the past 50 years. Read More
The two New Yorks - city and state - were the nation's twin towers of public indebtedness long before the tragic events of Sept. 11 placed extraordinary new strains on their budgets. Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's preliminary budget was surprisingly easy on city employees, even though personal service costs comprise more than half of the total budget. His proposed workforce reduction of 5,000 to 7,000 positions out of a total workforce of 306,000—20% higher than was previously reported—is many fewer than the number Mayor Giuliani proposed to cut in 1993 when he faced a similar budget gap. Read More
One welcome change in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's preliminary budget is a more accurate count of New York City's enormous municipal workforce. It turns out there are even more city employees than anyone previously thought -- ironically underscoring just how little Mayor Bloomberg is initially proposing in the way of agency workforce reductions, despite all the talk of budgetary "pain." Read More