You wouldn't know it from the gubernatorial campaign commercials, but New York state is facing an enormous budget gap next year. By far the toughest challenge facing the winner of the Nov. 5 election will be to close that gap without derailing a still-wobbly state economy. Read More
Faced with a huge and seemingly ever-expanding city budget gap, Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently floated a pair of trial balloons - only to see both ideas promptly shot down by Gov. George E. Pataki. Read More
With New York's future at risk, Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg are taking sharply contrasting approaches to closing huge budget gaps. Or are they? Read More
Gov. George E. Pataki set just the right tone for this year's New York state budget battle when he opened the legislative session in January with a plea to avoid "job killing" tax increases. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver replied: "On the subject of taxes, let me be very clear, the Assembly is not advocating tax hikes." Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's $1 billion "doomsday" budget- cutting plan is widely perceived as a scare tactic designed to force concessions out of Gov. Pataki and the Legislature: Once Bloomberg gets what he needs out of Albany, the contingency plan goes back into a locked drawer in the basement of City Hall. Read More
Mayor Bloomberg's "draconian" service-cutting contingency plan dominated the headlines when he unveiled his fiscal 2004 city budget proposal last week. But the real news is that the budget has brought the city a big step closer to another massive tax hike, posing a grave new threat to New York's still-shrinking economy. Read More
By any standard, the revenue bill passed by the state Legislature last week was a real blockbuster - raising taxes on a scale that would dwarf anything enacted during the rolling fiscal crisis that punctuated Gov. Mario Cuomo's tenure. Read More
After a winter and spring filled with budgetary "doomsday" talk in City Hall, New York's latest fiscal crisis has been interrupted by an eerie, eye-of-the-storm calm. In the space of two months, Mayor Bloomberg's demands for union concessions and program cuts gave way to unilateral budget restorations and celebratory photo ops with City Council leaders. Read More