The just-enacted federal tax increase will fall heavily on high-income New Yorkers – but will take a much smaller bite out of the Empire State’s tax base than President Barack Obama had been seeking... Read More
Category: Blog
New York is at the top of the debt list in the latest U.S. Census data on state and local government finances. As of 2009, New York’s state and local long-term indebtedness came to $15,202 per-capita, more than any state and 74 percent above the national average. Read More
Interrupting a relentless stream of negative stories about natural gas hydrofracking in the Northeast, The New York Times notices that gas exploration in neighboring Pennsylvania has touched off a boom in New York’s once-languishing Southern Tier. Read More
The New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) has just informed school districts across the state that their teacher pension contribution rates for the 2013-14 school year will rise from the current 11.84 percent to between 15.5 and 16.5 percent of salaries — which would translate into an additional taxpayer costs totaling $539 million to $686 million, based on the latest available teacher payroll figures. Read More
New York’s heavily tax-subsidized healthcare sector also can function as a patronage trough for the politicians who do so much to fund it, as we’re reminded by this article in today’s New York Times. Read More
The budgetary problems of bigger New York localities, such as Yonkers, tend to dominate the headlines — but contenders for the dubious distinction of most financially troubled municipality in the Empire State would also include Schenectady... Read More
State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli is out today with a new report on New York State’s public authorities. He counts 1,169 of them, including 324 on the state level, 837 local authorities and eight “Interstate/International.” Read More
An alert reader has provided the answer to a question posed on this blog yesterday: how or where did the state’s largest public employee union come up with its estimate that Governor Cuomo’s proposed Tier 6 pension plan will “reduce benefits” by 40 percent? Read More