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
Working for the MTA is the fast track to a six-figure salary. One in four Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees made $100,000 or more in 2014, according to payroll data released by the Empire Center Thursday. Read More
The same day a report came out that partly attributed a rapid rise in M.T.A. costs to a union contract brokered by Governor Andrew Cuomo, Cuomo said he was "not in a position to say whether $800 million in overtime is a lot of money or a little money." Read More
One in four Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) employees was paid more than $100,000 during 2014, according to payroll data added today to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
Seizing on the hardships of young firefighters and cops who have received skimpy disability pensions after being forced into retirement by line-of-duty injuries, unions representing the Bravest and Finest are pushing to roll back hard-won pension reforms. Read More
The state Assembly has not released expenditure reports for a full year, according to the Empire Center for Public Policy. The reports included details of members per diem reimbursements. But the last one made public was for the period ending in March of 2014. The Empire Center's Executive Director, Tim Hoefer, joined us to discuss this lack-of-transparency issue. Read More
The Assembly paid $1.1 million to 130 members for costs related to “legislative duties” performed in Albany between April and September 2014, according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center's transparency website. The data was released more than eight months after the end of the reporting period, an unusually long amount of time. Read More
State lawmakers have given a real boost to government transparency and the public's right to know by voting to speed up the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) process. Read More