Even as the state Assembly was voting yesterday to extend a moratorium on hydrofracking of gas shale deposits in upstate New York, new economic reports were showing the benefits of fracking in nearby states. Read More
Category: Blog
The weekly City and State opens its feature on the minimum wage issue with a portrait of Michelle Dawkins, who rises at 2:30 a.m. to earn $7.25 an hour ferrying wheelchair-bound passengers among the terminals at JFK airport. Assuming she is able to work 40 hours a week without a sick day, Dawkins “will make $15,080 over the course of a year,” the article says. Read More
It’s no surprise that some New York’s local governments are choosing to override the state’s new property tax cap. The real news is that the vast majority — so far — apparently are managing to live within it. Read More
For an excellent dissection of how the federal Affordable Care Act will initially affect New York, see this article in yesterday’s New York Post by the Manhattan Institute’s Paul Howard and Yevgeniy Feyman. Read More
Recent trends on Wall Street indicate that public pension funds with fiscal years ending June 30 probably missed their rate-of-return targets for 2012. I delve into one plan in particular — the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System — on the editorial blog at Newsday. Read More
Republican pols in New York’s downstate suburbs loudly celebrated last week’scourt ruling tossing out a payroll tax enacted by the Legislature in 2009 to subsidize mass transit in the 12-county Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) region. Read More
Working added overtime to increase retirement benefits—i.e., pension padding or “spiking”—is an old tradition in the public sector, especially among police officers, firefighters and other employees working under contracts that provide them with ample overtime opportunities. Read More
If you ever find yourself wondering why some of the infrastructure in America’s largest and richest city seems so inadequate, you need look no farther than the southern tip of Manhattan for part of the answer. Read More