Tag: Public Finance

Governor David Paterson is right on the money in calling for "bold and aggressive action to reduce state spending" to deal with the severe and worsening fiscal crisis detailed in today's .  At this point, after months of dire warnings, there's hardl Read More

As shown below, the highest-earning 1 percent of taxpayers (those with incomes above $750,000 or so as of 2007) accounted for nearly 40 percent of New York's total state income tax liability last year -- up from around 27 percent in the mid-1990s.  Read More

“If the plodding national economy stumbles into another recession, New York — plagued by high unemployment and the prospect of a rising tide of layoffs on Wall Street — probably will take a tumble, too.” That’s the main takeaway from an article in today’s New York Times on the outlook for the city’s economy — which, of course, has inevitable implications for all of the Empire State. Read More

Declining bridge and tunnel traffic is one of the factors cited by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey as justification for its proposed toll and fare increase, which has met with a predictable reaction from Governors Andrew Cuomo and Chris Christie. But a closer look at the PA’s original traffic projections suggest they may have been inflated to start with. Read More

When Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last month that New York's state and local pension fund had earned 14.6 percent on its investments in fiscal 2010-11, the AFL-CIO's Dennis Hughes the the comptroller's numbers had "call[ed] into question the need fo Read More

The image on the cover of New York State's is obviously meant to convey the sense that there's not only a light visible at the end of the budgetary tunnel, we're just about to emerge into broad daylight. But the report itself, released late yesterday Read More

And speaking of debt: in its latest on the newly adopted New York City budget, the state Financial Control Board says the city's unfunded liability for "other post-employment benefits" (OPEB) could approach $100 billion in three years. As shown in th Read More