New York City has finally wriggled off the hook for what's left of that ‘70s debt. Under last week's ruling by the state's highest court, $2 billion the city was obligated to pay the Municipal Assistance Corp. (MAC) over the next four years will be transformed into roughly $5 billion in state payments to yet another financing entity over the next 30 years. Read More
Thanks to state budget gridlock in Albany, New York City homeowners will have to wait at least a little longer for Mayor Bloomberg's $400 property tax rebate. Read More
Welfare reform was one of the big successes of the Giuliani years. Unfortunately, the city's welfare rolls are no longer steadily falling. What's more, other forms of public assistance have been steadily rising. Read More
A court-imposed dead line for changing New York state's school fund ing formula will probably come and go in the next two weeks, without any agreed-upon response from Gov. Pataki and legislative leaders in Albany. At that point, it will be up to state Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse — and, by extension, the appellate courts above him — to decide what needs to be done to ensure a "sound basic education" for all New York City students. Read More
Perception has a way of trumping reality in politics. Just ask former president George H.W. Bush, who was denied re-election in November 1992 largely because he was perceived as doing too little to end a relatively mild national recession that actually had been over for a year-and-a-half. Read More
The largest privately run ferry service be tween New Jersey and Manhattan is seeking a financial bailout for at least some of its operations from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which already controls most of the bridge, tunnel and rail network that ferry riders are paying a premium to avoid. Read More
When independent "dollar van" operators began to proliferate in Queens and Brooklyn in the wake of the 1980 transit strike, local politicians moved quickly to protect New York's inefficient public (and union) transit monopoly. Read More
The saga of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) court challenge to New York state school-financing formula continues to unfold in depressingly predictable fashion. Read More