Voters in New York's suburban, rural and smaller city school districts approved 92 percent of proposed school budgets yesterday, according to the New York State School Boards Association. This is above the historical average approval rate of 83 percent... Read More
e21 has a good staff editorial up on the now-tragic Greek crisis, with possible implications for New York and California. The plan for Greece, of course, is for Europe and the IMF to bail out the debt-drenched nation's bondholders, by imposing austerity... Read More
As reported in today's Wall Street Journal, the state may re-enter the short-term credit markets for the first time in two decades in order to cover a cash shortfall in June. The possibility was first raised in a forum at the Rockefeller Institute... Read More
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln released her bill for derivatives reform last week. It contains a nugget of good news for state and local taxpayers. The bill would require dealers in the oft-complex business of interest rate and other "swaps," largely... Read More
hile a relatively small number of taxpayers are shouldering the lion's share of the federal, state and city income tax burden, everyone will soon be footing a bigger bill for rising government spending. Nicole explains... Read More
City Comptroller John Liu was asked at a Crain's NY Breakfast last week whether he would favor shifting future municipal employees from a defined-benefit pension system to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution system. His reply, according to Crain's Insider... Read More
... this week, but what the state did with the money it reaped during the bubble(s). Factoids: Between 1993, the year (roughly) before the tech boom started, and 2007, the last year of the credit bubble, New York State personal-income tax collections... Read More
Would the "comprehensive reforms" unveiled today by the state Senate's Majority Democrats "fix the state’s broken budget process and give New Yorkers a fiscally responsible budget," as they claim? Of course not. There are, however, some good ideas... Read More