Cities and taxpayers have to decide what’s the best way to utilize tax dollars, said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center. “I think generally speaking … in a perfect world, overtime is the result of extraordinary circumstances or poor management,” he said. “It’s about right-sizing government.” Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy has been in a legal battle for years with several public pension systems after lower courts ruled starting in 2011 that the names of pensioners do not need to be made public. Read More
Curious how much the government worker next door makes? For information that is lacking in the state’s websites—namely, public salaries—nonprofit groups, such as the Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy, compile the info into searchable online databases. Their website,SeeThroughNY allows users to search public employee salaries, pensions, contracts and other info for various levels of government. Read More
Tim Hoefer, the executive director of the Empire Center, talked to City & State about the organization's SeeThroughNY web site, which posts a wealth of financial and budgetary data online in an attempt to improve government transparency and inform New Yorkers about how their tax dollars are being spent. Read More
A few Albany City School District administrators are getting raises, but Empire Center Executive Director Tim Hoefer notes that these costs are just a drop in the bucket compared to what the district spends on teachers and their contract. Read More
In 2008 ... Albany schools had 31 employees making more than $100,000, according to SeeThroughNY, an online database maintained by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
The complete 2013 fiscal year New York City payroll, which includes names and salaries for more than 475,000 full- and part-time employees, is now posted on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center for Public Policy’s government spending transparency website. Read More
Payroll data for 67,050 state and local public authority employees in New York has been added to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center for Public Policy’s public spending transparency website. Read More