Month: March 2014

Governor Andrew Cuomo last week announced a new "Innovation Venture Capital Fund" to invest up to $50 million in public funds into start-up companies. Meanwhile, the state’s existing venture fund, known as Innovate NY, is the subject of a federal audit focused on a firm whose managing director was named by Cuomo to his 2010 gubernatorial transition team and to a regional economic development council. Read More

Showing contempt for the public — if not also for the courts — retirement funds representing the city’s cops and firefighters are stonewalling a judicial order to make public the names of all their pensioners. Read More

Two days after the Empire Center highlighted looming deficits in the state Thruway Authority budget, the authority's board has put off the meeting at which it was expected to adopt a final budget for 2015. Read More

To make the 2015 proposed $2 billion budget balance without any toll increase, the Thruway is depending on more drivers than its own traffic consultant estimates, according to E.J. McMahon, an Albany budget watchdog who is president and founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy. That means the Thruway is counting on $31 million more in toll revenues in 2015 than forecasted in its traffic study, McMahon says. Read More