Month: March 2006

In a single recent 12-month period, the state's largest teachers' union spent $150 million on itself, according to a new study by the Foundation for Education Reform & Accountability. FERA understandably found it hard to resist linking the "lavish" spending habits of New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) with the union's perennial demand for more state education spending. Read More

The state-funded share of Medicaid costs will escalate rapidly over the next few years as Albany assumes responsibility for a greater share of county and New York Medicaid costs, according to projections explained in a new report from the Empire Center for New York State. Read More

Even if the Legislature doesn't add to Governor George Pataki's budget proposal, the state spending increase during his final term will be the largest since Mario Cuomo's second term in the late 1980s, according to the Empire Center's overview of the 2006-07 Executive Budget. After adjusting for a shift of aid payments between the current fiscal year and the coming year, the Empire Center report estimates the governor's proposed state funds spending increase for fiscal 2006-07 comes to just over 7 percent, or two and a half times the projected inflation rate. Assuming this figure holds, the total State Funds budget increase since fiscal 2002-03 will be 28 percent, or double the inflation rate, the report says. Read More

New York State created new private sector jobs at a little more than half the national pace last year, according to newly released statistics from the state Department of Labor (DOL). The  of revised annual averages shows the state gain Read More

The following is the text of a letter to the editor published March 11 in the Schenectady Daily Gazette: New York State's failure to adjust its personal income tax structure for inflation has, indeed, increased the tax burden on m Read More