Labor unions and their allies in New York's burgeoning health and social services sector are demanding new taxes on the wealthy to help close the state's $12 billion budget gap. After all, the argument goes, it's only fair to ask those who gained the most from the economic boom to bail the rest of us out of this bust. Read More
Long Island's State Senate and Assembly members are patting themselves on the back for having blocked a revival of the commuter tax. But they also have provided the pivotal bloc of legislative support for a big state income tax hike that will transfer more of the Island's wealth to places like Binghamton and Buffalo. Read More
Gov. George E. Pataki set just the right tone for this year's New York state budget battle when he opened the legislative session in January with a plea to avoid "job killing" tax increases. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver replied: "On the subject of taxes, let me be very clear, the Assembly is not advocating tax hikes." Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's $1 billion "doomsday" budget- cutting plan is widely perceived as a scare tactic designed to force concessions out of Gov. Pataki and the Legislature: Once Bloomberg gets what he needs out of Albany, the contingency plan goes back into a locked drawer in the basement of City Hall. Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's "draconian" service-cutting contingency plan dominated the headlines when he unveiled his fiscal 2004 city budget proposal last week. But the real news is that the budget has brought the city a big step closer to another massive tax hike, posing a grave new threat to New York's still-shrinking economy. Read More
By any standard, the revenue bill passed by the state Legislature last week was a real blockbuster - raising taxes on a scale that would dwarf anything enacted during the rolling fiscal crisis that punctuated Gov. Mario Cuomo's tenure. Read More
The state Legislature's latest aid package didn't really do New York City many favors. Sure, Mayor Bloomberg got most of the state funding he was looking for--but some of that money is likely to vaporize next year, when the state will almost certainly be broke again. Read More
In an era of steeply progressive taxation, New York state's formulas for aid to local governments inevitably have a Robin Hood effect - redistributing income from the relatively wealthy New York City metropolitan area to relatively poorer regions north of the Bear Mountain Bridge. Read More