Office expenditures of individual state Senators and Assembly members for the six months ending September 30, 2009, the latest period for which data are available, have been posted in a searchable format on the Empire Center’s government transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada (D-Bronx), spent $880,201 on his legislative office operations and staff in the most recent six-month period reported by the Legislature—nearly $273,000 more than former Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno (R-Brunswick) spent during a comparable period in 2008. Read More
New York’s Legislature should avoid adding any tax increases to the proposed 2011-12 state budget, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy testified today before the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committees. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed cap on property taxes is justified in light of New York State’s exceptionally heavy property tax burden, according to a report released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
New York’s State Legislature spent $114 million during the six-month period ending last September, according to the latest legislative expenditure data posted at SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. SeeThroughNY now includes four full years of legislative expenditures, in what has become the most extensive searchable database of its kind available to New Yorkers on the Internet. Read More
New York’s State Legislature spent $105 million during the six-month period ending last March, according to the latest legislative expenditure data posted at SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. SeeThroughNY includes expenditures dating back to October 1, 2006, in what has become the most extensive searchable database of its kind available to New Yorkers on the Internet. Read More
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver wants to raise the state's minimum wage by 17 percent, to $8.50 an hour, and link it to inflation, guaranteeing more yearly increases. Read More
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is insisting that Gov. Cuomo “negotiate” his plans to reform New York’s outdated pension systems with the public-employee unions — which misses the biggest point of reform. Read More