The Senate today also passed the so-called Public Authorities Reform Act previously approved by the Assembly and backed by Governor Paterson–complete with a form of super card-check for unions seeking to organize authority-sponsored hotel and convention center development projects.
The headline on the Senate’s Majority press release announcing the bill’s passage deserves a special niche in Albany’s jam-packed Pantheon of Preposterous Claims.
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[Editor's note: This post was corrected after it came to light that records supplied by the Health Department gave wrong addresses for 44 grant recipients. The statistics and tables below were updated on July 18.] Read More
New York’s Post-Pandemic State Budget Picture Is Looking Worse
Governor Cuomo continues to burn while pols in Washington fiddle around the issue of providing more aid to states and localities in yet another federal stimulus bill. Meanwhile, New York State's plummeting revenues still haven't hit their post-pandemic bottom, according to the First Quarterly Update to the state's FY 2021 Financial Plan. Read More
Cuomo extends costly arbitration law
Three years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo blew a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform one of the most costly provisions of the New York State law regulating public-sector collective bargaining.
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A glimpse into slush guidelines
New York State’s $1 billion capital project slush fund is dispensing borrowed money across the state outside public scrutiny, but two local governments have inadvertently given New Yorkers a glimpse of its inner workings. Read More
“Smart” sounded good to 62%
Who could be against “smart schools”?
The unsurprising answer: not nearly enough New Yorkers to defeat Proposal 3 on yesterday’s statewide ballot, which authorizes $2 billion in state borrowing to finance local school district purchases of computers and other classroom technology; expand schools’ high-speed and wireless Internet capacity; install “high-tech security features”; and build new classrooms for pre-kindergarten programs. Read More
Google guy to weigh in on school tech funds?
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, has been named by Governor Cuomo to a commission “charged with advising the State on how to best invest the Governor’s proposed $2 billion Smart Schools Bond Act in order to enhance teaching and learning through technology,” as announced by the governor’s office today.*
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Transparency, not
Last week, at a Manhattan news conference that was also “live-streamed” on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s website, the chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) and the president of Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) reflecting a tentative contract deal that will shape the MTA’s labor compensation costs for years to come. Read More
Oink!
New York’s newly enacted state budget includes what looks like the biggest, juiciest capital pork pie Albany has cooked up since before the Great Recession. The State and Municipal Facilities Program first popped out of the budget oven last year in the form of a $385 million appropriation, of which $26.65 million was spent. Read More