Gloria Wright / The Post-StandardLiverpool school board members recently approved a three-year contract that calls for raises of 3.65 percent , 2.15 percent and 2.0 percent. Board members a week earlier had rejected a one-year contract with a 3.65 percent salary increase. Here board members Donald Cook (left) and Richard Pento confer during a board meeting. The secret contract Want to know what’s in a proposed contract? You can’t. Districts don’t release any details of a contract until after it’s approved by the school board and the teachers. Critics say that’s wrong, the public needs input. Union, school district officials say making a contract public wouldn’t work. The story. The cost of living has decreased in the last year. The median pay in Central New York has dropped. Thousands of people across the region have had mandatory unpaid time off and increases in health care costs. Nearly 29,000 others have lost their jobs and many employees have lost their health insurance. Yet, the 10 school districts in the area that settled contracts in the year or so since the recession hit have awarded annual raises to teachers and staff that — with one exception — range from 3.5 to 4 percent, according to a review by The Post-Standard. The average annual pay raise is 3.69 percent. Syracuse, the biggest district in the area, awarded its teachers 4 percent raises for four years: a nearly 17 percent increase in pay. The pay increases come on salaries that start at about $41,000 and in some cases can reach $100,000 for a longtime teacher, according to district contracts and payrolls. The median salary in Central New York is $53,410…
“The biggest problem for the state is the enormous, recurring structural budget gap starting next year and into the future,” said E.J. McMahon of the conservative-leaning Empire Center. “Cuomo clearly hopes that starting in 2021, (Democratic presidential candidate Joseph) Biden and a Democratic Congress will provide states and local government a couple of year’s worth of added stimulus. Read More
Ed McKinley
ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process, noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar."
M Read More
Michael Gormley
ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost New Yo Read More
Johan Sheridan
ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a against the state Department of Health on Friday.
“This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s Read More
The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More
With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More
“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More
No doubt, the Health Department and the governor would like this report to be the final word on the subject.
But if it’s all the same with them, we’d still like a truly independent review. Read More