The State Legislature will start hearings Monday to dissect the $142.6-billion executive budget proposed last week by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo for 2013-14. But there's a better way than traveling to Albany in winter to find out how your tax dollars are b Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo made good on a pledge to keep new taxes out of his proposed budget for the next fiscal year. Some existing or expiring fees, however, received new life. Business groups have largely praised Cuomo's budget - which was first unv Read More
Rarely is there a time when the conservative Empire Center for Public Policy and the Civil Service Employees Association agree on an issue. So today we bring you when those two moons have aligned. The conservative think tank and the state governme Read More
The Town of Babylon is paying full health benefits to a half-dozen of its part-time workers, costing the town nearly $100,000 last year. The town voted late last year to officially approve the benefits retroactively -- with some benefits going bac Read More
Nearly 1,500 state employees last year made more money than the governor, a new report released Wednesday shows. The top state earner in 2012 was Antonio Alfonso, a SUNY Downstate Medical Center professor and Department of Surgery chairman who pul Read More
During the past few months, I’ve been cobbling together information on open meetings, public records and databases. I’ve been getting some really good feedback from the public and government officials alike. Last week, we talked about the data Read More
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo proposed a modest hike in state spending with a $142.6 billion tentative budget with no sweeping policy proposals or tax increases to close a $1.2 billion deficit in the next fiscal year. State-funded spending would increase 1 Read More
Long Islanders dominate the list of non-teacher public employees in New York State who retired with six-figure pensions in 2011 and 2012, making up just over 50 percent of the total, according to state records. Of the 426 retirees who received $10 Read More