The Empire Center’s Explore Your State Budget app has been updated to reflect financial data in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed 2014-15 Executive Budget. Read More
Tag: Budgets
Labor costs make up about 75 percent of a school district's budget. So during budget season, employee and teacher salaries often are scrutinized. Read More
There are budget tricks, and there are budget tricks. Some governors go to enormous lengths and expense to improve the way their finances look. They sell highways or government buildings, delay worker paychecks or tax refunds, or concoct new and costly ways to borrow money. Read More
Statewide median teacher salaries in the region increased by more than 10 percent from 2008-09 to 2012-13, according to a report released by the conservative think-tank Empire Center for Public Policy. Meanwhile, the report released Monday notes that while student enrollment, especially in upstate schools, have largely decreased, staff reductions haven’t kept up with the rate at which students have left. According to the study, more than 76,000 students have left New York state schools from 2008-09, while districts have cut 25,350 positions. Read More
Statewide, median teacher salary increased by about 10 percent between the fiscal years 2008-2009 and 2012-2013, according to a new report from the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative government finance watchdog. Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative group, released a report Monday, meanwhile, that points to decreasing enrollment, increasing teacher salaries and high levels of staffing as factors in the continuing rise in school spending. Teachers in the Schenectady City School District earned a median salary of $59,651 in 2012-13, compared to $51,300 five years ago, according to the report. Read More
The full extent of the continuing rise in school spending since the recession was not inevitable or unavoidable. It was the result of (a) increasing teacher compensation costs driven largely by automatic pay raises, and (b) continued relatively high levels of staffing, relative to enrollment, especially in non-teaching titles. Read More
During his budget address last week, Cuomo presented a chart showing how a self-imposed two-percent cap on state government spending growth would change the $10 billion deficit that he bridged in the 2011 budget into a $2 billion surplus by 2016. But E.J. McMahon, president of the right-leaning Empire Center, points out that the number is dependent upon “the magic footnote": It assumes $7.7 billion in future cutsthat are not lined out in the state's latest financial plan.“Has he created a $2 billion surplus? In a word, no. … This is an aspiration.” Read More