LAST week, Gov. Paterson activated New York’s “health-emergency preparedness plan,” as a prudent precautionary measure to deal with a potential swine-flu epidemic. Read More
Category: Commentary
Say this much for the "mobility tax": Unable or unwilling to find more cash in operational savings, capital cuts, or the farebox, the Ravitch Commission apparently tried to find the least-awful way to raise another $1.5 billion for the MTA. Read More
When Gov. Paterson delivers his annual message to the Legislature tomor row, “the state of the state” will be painfully obvious. Read More
School districts on Long Island and across New York State dodged a bullet last month when the legislature rejected Gov. David A. Paterson’s call for a midyear cut in K-12 education aid. But their luck is about to run out. Read More
Gov. Paterson’s second Executive Budget is not nearly as tough as his rhetoric (or the headlines) would imply. But in dollars and cents terms alone, it is relatively restrained and almost fiscally conservative -- by Albany’s low standards, that is. Read More
Advocates of the misnamed “millionaire’s tax” enacted in New York state last year claimed that it would restore “fairness” to a tax code that favored the rich. Read More
The late Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York used to obsess over the flow of funds between the federal government and the states Read More
Thirty-five years ago this month, the state Urban Development Corp. defaulted on its short-term debt -- setting off bond-market alarms that culminated in New York City’s 1970s fiscal crisis. Could the Metropolitan Transportation Authority become this era’s UDC? Read More