Welfare reform was one of the big successes of the Giuliani years. Unfortunately, the city's welfare rolls are no longer steadily falling. What's more, other forms of public assistance have been steadily rising. Read More
Tag: Taxes and Spending
A court-imposed dead line for changing New York state's school fund ing formula will probably come and go in the next two weeks, without any agreed-upon response from Gov. Pataki and legislative leaders in Albany. At that point, it will be up to state Supreme Court Justice Leland DeGrasse — and, by extension, the appellate courts above him — to decide what needs to be done to ensure a "sound basic education" for all New York City students. Read More
The saga of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) court challenge to New York state school-financing formula continues to unfold in depressingly predictable fashion. Read More
It is certainly a memorable image: New York City mayor Abe Beame standing before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and leaving a plaintive, one-word note—“HELP.” Read More
Arnold Schwarzenegger just proposed it for California. Michigan has had it since 1997. Florida has had an optional version since 2000. It's time for New York to join the revolution and adopt the same kind of 401(k) retirement plan that is almost universal in the private sector for its future civil servants. Read More
During the recent uproar over the Thruway Authority's questionable handling of a proposed Erie Canal land development deal, far too little attention was paid to the more fundamental question of why the Thruway Authority had anything to do with the canal in the first place. Read More
Reinforcing New York City's improved policing strategies in the 1990s were tougher sentencing laws and a significant expansion of the city and state correctional systems. Would-be criminals came to realize that they were not only more likely to get caught, but more likely to end up serving hard time. Read More
Among the many aspects of the state budget that will have an impact on the economy of New York, I’d like to focus today on an issue of overriding importance – the status of the state personal income tax. Since 1997, the top rate of our state i Read More