Mayor Bloomberg has opened negotiations with the city's largest union by asking for pension concessions like those rejected by transit workers before their walkout in December. Read More
Tag: Budgets
In a budget " cleanup bill" they adopted before adjourning two weeks ago, state legislators effectively plunked about $1 billion worth of rum soaked cherries on what was already a massive New York style cheesecake of fiscal excess. Read More
Two years ago, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School made headlines with a report thoroughly documenting the "dysfunction" of New York's state Legislature. While the Brennan Center is decidedly left-of-center on many public policy issues, its dissection of Albany's legislative process reached conclusions that cut across ideological and partisan lines. Read More
Crucial details of New York's $113 billion state budget are negotiated in secret and shrouded in darkness. But this year's gubernatorial campaign is providing real hope for change in Albany. Both major-party candidates, Republican John Faso and Democrat Eliot Spitzer, appear committed to boosting the fiscal transparency and accountability of state government. Read More
Running for a fourth term in 1994, Gov. Mario Cuomo sat on a mid-year budget report that would have called attention to a growing hole in the state budget. It was only after losing the election that Cuomo released the report -- and George Pataki discovered he was inheriting a budget gap of at least $4 billion. Read More
Next year's New York State budget process won't simply be a test of Eliot Spitzer's ability to add and subtract. Above all, it will be a test of the new governor's political will and leadership skills. Read More
When George Pataki took office as governor in January 1995, New York state was only feebly recovering from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Pataki wanted to jump-start the economy with lower taxes — but he also had inherited a $5 billion state budget shortfall from Mario Cuomo. Read More
Gov. Spitzer won't present his first Executive Budget for another four weeks, but the essence of New York's financial situation could be distilled from three sentences in his first State of the State Address yesterday Read More