The end-of-session sausage-making machine is moving into high gear in Albany, where the state Senate's Republican majority has cooked up a of spicy meat and meat substitutes, including a property tax cap, New York City rent regulations, permanent lo Read More
Oblivious to exploding pension costs and the looming iceberg of retiree health care obligations, Albany lawmakers have introduced 55 bills that would "enhance the pension benefits of New York’s public employees, grant costly protections to retiree... Read More
In the publishing business, the annotation "TK" is used in manuscripts to indicate some important piece of information is "to come." Gov. Andrew Cuomo's 2011-12 Executive Budget is a book draft with an impressive cover and a promising theme... Read More
Notwithstanding media coverage predicting New York's "latest budget ever," it's worth noting that all of the state's 2010-11 budget appropriations already have been adopted. What's left hanging is a revenue bill encompassing $828 million in additional... Read More
Albany likes to tax bad things, like cigarettes and, maybe soon, soda. But one State Senator's new idea of a sin tax -- on the defaulted sovereign nation of Argentina -- would harm the state's main cash cow, Wall Street. Argentina defaulted on its... Read More
New York State entities continue to scrape the bottom of the barrel to scare up a few dollars. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will issue $475 million in short-term notes this week. The MTA pledges to repay the debt as soon as it get Read More
Governor David Paterson began his tenure in the spring of 2008 on a promising note by embracing , almost exactly as proposed by the . But when the Senate actually passed his bill a few months later, he backed off and dropped the issue. Last year, Read More
The outlook for a timely and fiscally responsible New York State budget is as poor as it has ever been at this point in a fiscal year that ends March 31. [caption id="attachment_2489" align="alignright" width="178" caption="We like NY's proactiv Read More