A challenging fiscal environment and notoriously high property taxes have raised structural and service issues to new levels as communities explore the potential efficiencies to be gained through shared services, dissolution and consolidation. Read More
Latest Work
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has agreed to a seven-year contract that will give MTA cops base pay increases totaling 18 percent, including a 7.5 percent retroactive boost effective immediately, the Daily News reports. Union members also scored a boost in their longevity pay, which will rise to a maximum of $9,800, in exchange for agreeing to curb overtime, stretch-out the schedule of annual pay hikes for newly hired officers and make new recruits pay 2 percent of their salaries toward health insurance. Read More
In 2011, Suffolk County passed a local law (Article I, Section 77-4) barring county elected officials from collecting two public-sector salaries. Now, however, County Executive Steve Bellone wants to change the law... Read More
In 2008, around the time the Empire Center launched its transparency website SeeThroughNY, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli was moving on the same track with the creation of OpenBookNewYork. Read More
Former Governor Eliot Spitzer is making a last-minute bid to get on the Democratic primary ballot for New York City comptroller. But, writing in the Daily News, E.J. says Spitzer’s record as governor “raises serious questions of his suitability for this particular job.” Read More
Governor Cuomo today marked Sunshine Week by launching Open New York, a really cool portal for finding government data online -- without having to file a Freedom of Information Law request. The site launched with 267 data sets populating it. That's a respectable number, but a fraction of what could eventually be on the site. Read More
Just two school districts -- out of nearly 700 in New York -- will be limited to the new zero-tax hike contingency budget provision of the state's new property tax cap law next year. Read More
Nineteen school districts that attempted to override the tax cap in last month's school budget votes will present revised budgets to voters tomorrow. Nine of those districts are resubmitting budgets below the cap, seven have budgets at the cap and three districts will try again to override the cap. Read More