Category: Commentary

Wall Street’s woes leave the state no choice but to slash spending. David Paterson took the oath as governor of New York on March 17, 2008, succeeding the disgraced Eliot Spitzer on the same day that Bear Stearns collapsed. Read More

New York’s public-pension system has become the epicenter of an in fluence-peddling scandal that has at tracted the attention of the SEC as well as state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. But the millions in shady “placement fees” pocketed by a few politically connected middlemen are small change compared with the mushrooming cost of lavish pension benefits for state and local government retirees. Read More

Before staggering away from Albany last week, the state Senate delivered a pleasant surprise for taxpayers -- rejecting a well-intentioned but badly designed bill that would have allowed the state and local governments to borrow billions from the state pension system while potentially compounding financial risks for generations to come. Read More

Well, what do you know? After raising taxes on high-income households by up to 31 percent, New York state is collecting far less income tax than it had anticipated just a few months ago. Read More