Local governments had hoped for an overhaul this year to the controversial binding arbitration process, including a 2 percent cap in the awards. But what they got were small changes in the 39-year-old system for resolving disputes in local police and firefighter contract negotiations. Read More
Sometime before midnight Wednesday, without fanfare or ceremony, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed measures that extended or increased local sales tax levies in nearly two dozen counties around the state. Read More
A new program to extend tax-free benefits to certain businesses caused the state to downgrade its revenue projections by $323 million through March 2017, according to new estimates from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget office. The program, known as START-UP NY, allows businesses to avoid paying taxes for up to 10 years if they create jobs and locate near participating college campuses. Read More
New York's mayoral candidates have paid surprisingly little attention to one issue that really sets the Big Apple apart: an extraordinarily heavy tax burden. No other big city in the country imposes such a broad array of taxes at such high levels, piling its own levies on top of those collected by Albany. For example, corporations pay a combined rate of 17.5 percent on net income allocated to New York City, roughly double the average in most of the country. At the same time, the city's property tax is engineered to fall most heavily on commercial property and apartment buildings -- contributing to sky-high rents in both categories... Read More
It's no secret the county budget is tight. Accounting for roughly 1 percent of the budget is the base salary of the top 25 highest-paid county employees. Chautauqua County has a 2013 budget of roughly $230 million. According to numbers gathered from See Through NY, the total base pay for those 25 employees was $2,338,008 in 2013. The number is a 2.8 percent increase over the base pay for the 25 highest-paid county employees in 2012. It is an 8.4 percent increase from 2009. Read More
In a half-century of public life, Richard Ravitch has been lieutenant governor of New York, head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a mayoral candidate, an adviser to many politicians and an instructor of many journalists in the wonkier aspects of governance. As a kind of fiscal first responder, he is one of those guys called in when an agency (or a bank, or, in one case, Major League Baseball) faces crisis. But lately he is best known as a prophet of gloom. When Ravitch, who is 80, is invited to lecture or debate or op-edify, his hosts expect tales of fiscal imprudence heading toward a grim comeuppance; they are not disappointed. And he has a tendency to be right. Read More
The task of jump starting New York's struggling economies is going to require a lot of work from lawmakers in Albany; but, is needed to help local governments keep up with rising costs. Last week, officials got a sobering reminder of what's at stake when Detroit declared bankruptcy, because several upstate cities face the same issues as the Motor City. Capital Tonight's Nick Reisman tells us more. Read More
Per-pupil funding and expenditures in New York schools grew steadily during the 2000s, with local revenues accounting for the largest proportion of most districts’ aid, according to a report this week from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The report shows that certain areas of the state have consistently higher per-pupil funding and spending. But western New York districts typically received and spent less than districts in other parts of the state, according to the report. Victor schools in Ontario County fell into the lowest categories, receiving and spending less than $15,000 per student. Read More