In 1980, at the peak of the stagflation-inspired tax revolt that had started in California, voters in Massachusetts approved a ballot initiative called Proposition 21/2. The statute capped local property taxes at 2.5% of real value of taxable propert Read More
ALBANY — A state commission urged the governor on Monday to cap local property tax increases at 4 percent a year as part of a preliminary proposal aimed at reducing New York’s local tax burden, among the highest in the nation. But with the pro Read More
ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson took one more chance this week to distance himself from the strategy of his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, the man he ran alongside nearly two years ago. “Trying to embarrass people, trying to intimidate people, tr Read More
New York City officials are bracing for increased pressure on the budget as the city's pension funds are reeling from the credit crisis and posting billions of dollars in losses. In the nine months leading up to March 31, the city's five pension f Read More
ALBANY - During the tail end of his 14 years as Senate majority leader, Joseph L. Bruno often reminded people he had fattened up the Capital Region. "I was there for 18 years watching dollars flow to New York City and flow to Long Island," Bruno s Read More
ALBANY — As political rituals go, it was one of Albany’s most predictable. Every two years, a state law that required public employees to pay their unions’ dues regardless of whether they joined would near expiration. And every two years, th Read More
Forced to give up a total of $400 million from their budgets, agencies have conserved cash in less than extreme ways: for example, putting a freeze on new BlackBerry purchases, relying more heavily on teleconferencing, limiting requests for outside counsel, or passing more costs down to the county level. Virtually all of the state's more than 200,000 employees get to keep their jobs. To cut down on personnel costs, agencies are limiting new hires to "critical functions" or slightly reducing payrolls through attrition. "This has been an exercise in painless paring," a fiscal analyst for the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said. Read More
The exclusion of New York City from Governor Paterson's signature tax relief proposal is drawing complaints from state lawmakers, who say the governor's plan to set strict limits on how much school districts are permitted to tax each year would end u Read More