When the Empire Center posted a list on its website of the 665 public employees “double dipping” — or collecting public sector pensions while getting paid for other public sector jobs — Herkimer County’s Dr. Vinay Patil emerged as one of the highest-paid at $210,000 annually. Read More
The failing grades given local government websites by the Empire Center for Public Policy shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s tried to use them. Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy is seeking to intervene in a lawsuit initiated by New York City firefighter unions in an attempt to block the release of pension recipients’ names alongside individual pension benefit amounts. Read More
F. F, F, F, F, F, F and F. Those are grades you certainly wouldn’t want to bring home to your parents. Read More
Long Island’s towns and cities paid their workforce less in 2013 than in 2012, with payrolls totaling $692 million — a 4.7 percent decline from $726.5 million the previous year, a Newsday database shows. Read More
A total of 665 state and local government workers have permission to collect both a full-time salary and retirement payments, according to a new report. Read More
The Cayuga County Legislature Ways and Means Committee held a pair of spirited meetings last week regarding the proposed 2015 county budget. Much of the discussion centered around spending cuts, and specifically how expense reductions would translate into jobs eliminated. The county is facing tough financial times, and in order to balance the budget and set operations on a more stable path, some tough choices must be made. With that in mind, county officials should be doing all they can to share information about the budget with the public. What we've seen so far, however, has been minimal at best. Read More
Only a week after an Empire Center for Public Policy report gave many municipal websites a failing grade, New York state unveiled a new site of its own. Read More