In a prelude to next week's budget message, Gov. Spitzer today delivered what was billed as a major address on health care reform. The real importance of the was encapsulated in its title: "Patients First." What the governor described Read More
Month: January 2007
While labor union rolls continue to shrink across the country, the latest federal statistics show that New York State's union membership rate--at nearly a quarter of the total workforce--remains more than double the national average.Nearly Read More
ALBANY - Gov. Eliot Spitzer pledged to cut Medicaid costs Friday, vowing in a major policy speech to be the defender of patients, not the powerful institutional interests that he blamed for persuading elected leaders to perpetuate a broken, unafforda Read More
ALBANY, Jan. 26— Gov. Eliot Spitzer said on Friday that he would seek billions of dollars in Medicaid and health care cost savings when he unveils his first executive budget on Wednesday. But while he repeatedly used the word “reform” in a s Read More
Looking ahead to the first budget of his administration, Governor Spitzer pledged earlier this month to "make hard choices and begin to fundamentally reform and restructure programs that have become needlessly expensive" and to "say ‘no' to budget requests we simply cannot afford." Read More
Dennis Rivera, the president of New York's largest health care union, announced yesterday that he would step down, but not without issuing a surprisingly pointed broadside against Gov. Eliot Spitzer's planned cuts in health care spending. In 17 ye Read More
The state-funded portion of Spitzer's $121 billion Executive Budget (excluding federal aid) calls for a spending hike of 7.8 percent - three times the projected inflation rate for the state's 2007-08 fiscal year, which begins April 1. Read More
Well, well, well. It seems that Governor Spitzer and Mayor Bloomberg, having bought into the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and the idea that the problem with our schools is a lack of money, are now fighting tooth and nail over the rest of the budget. Th Read More