When George Pataki took office as governor in January 1995, New York state was only feebly recovering from its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Pataki wanted to jump-start the economy with lower taxes — but he also had inherited a $5 billion state budget shortfall from Mario Cuomo. Read More
Notwithstanding the headlines generated by Gov. Eliot Spitzer's State of the State address, it takes some creative arithmetic to call the new governor's property tax initiative a "$6 billion tax cut." In fact, strictly speaking, Spitzer isn't proposing a tax cut so much as a tax shift. Read More
Looking ahead to the first budget of his administration, Governor Spitzer pledged earlier this month to "make hard choices and begin to fundamentally reform and restructure programs that have become needlessly expensive" and to "say ‘no' to budget requests we simply cannot afford." Read More
The state-funded portion of Spitzer's $121 billion Executive Budget (excluding federal aid) calls for a spending hike of 7.8 percent - three times the projected inflation rate for the state's 2007-08 fiscal year, which begins April 1. Read More
Medicaid spending on the elderly rose five times faster in New York than in other states during the most recent five-year period for which data are available, according to a report issued by the Empire Center. Read More
Video from a conference hosted by E.J. McMahon Read More
As if New Yorkers didn't already suspect that they're far more heavily taxed than residents of other big cities, the city Independent Budget Office yesterday issued a study proving it more conclusively than ever. Read More
I'd like to begin with two pointed observations about the 2007-08 Executive Budget and its impact on taxpayers and the economy: The budget will raise state taxes, in several significant respects. The budget will not provide l Read More