A fiscal watchdog group says it’s uncovered what it calls a “secret slush fund”, used by Governor Cuomo and state legislators to fund pet projects around the state, but the governor’s budget office says the grants are subject to oversight. Read More
Tag: Taxes and Spending
Gov. Cuomo’s payment of $16 million to keep CBS’s “The Late Show” in New York, when there was zero real threat of it leaving, is the kind of boondoggle Stephen Colbert might mock in his monologue — if he weren’t the one cashing the check. But that gratuitous giveaway of tax dollars, announced last year, turns out to have been the tip of a very big and ugly iceberg. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo, the head of the state, makes $179,000 per year. The Empire Center for Public Policy did some research and found more than 1,500 state employees are making more than the governor. Read More
Eighteen school districts sought to override the state's property tax cap in yesterday's school budget votes—the fewest attempts since the tax cap was enacted. Seven of those districts failed to win the 60 percent supermajority required to override the cap. Read More
The massive email hack of Sony Pictures shines a light on just how far executives will go to pool campaign contributions to a governor who has pushed hard to expand a film-tax credit here in New York. Read More
A trove of purloined emails detailing how Sony Pictures Entertainment executives poured money into Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign coffers after the state acted on a $26 million payout to the company has reignited criticism of New York's Film Tax Credit Program. Read More
The controversial nonprofit organization ACORN has been closed for almost five years, but that didn't stop the state Legislature from steering more than $24,000 its way in this year's budget. Read More
New York’s $142 billion budget, enacted on April 1, authorizes the state to spend $4,503 per second during its 2015-16 fiscal year, according to the Empire Center’s updated Spend-O-Meter. Read More