Politicians from Albany have been complaining for years that the state’s capital city is fiscally strapped because 60 percent of the property within its boundaries, much of it state owned, is tax exempt Read More
Research
Unlike state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, who says he’s still thinking it over, one upstate local official has already concluded that Governor Cuomo’s local government pension smoothingproposal would be a bad deal. Read More
Governor Cuomo’s proposed state budget for fiscal 2014 envisions a relatively strong 6.6 percent ($2.6 billion) increase in net personal income tax (PIT) receipts for the year starting April 1, even though the tax so far has under-performed the original budget projections for fiscal 2013. The highest-earning one percent of New York taxpayers is expected to generate 41 percent of net receipts, according to the Economic and Revenue Outlook volume of the budget Read More
The biggest of the almost-new taxes in Governor Cuomo’s “no new taxes” budget is being targeted for elimination by state Senate Republicans. They were joined today by business and industry representatives in calling on Cuomo to remove the extension of the Section 18-A “assessment” from his budget proposal. Read More
Today’s Albany Times Union gives front-page play to a story that has picked up surprisingly little sustained media attention since it was first reported two years ago: since 1990, New York State has ripped off the federal government for billions of dollars in overcharges of Medicaid reimbursements for the developmentally disabled — and the feds want their bucks back. Read More
Former New York Mayor Edward I. Koch, who died this week at 88, exemplified two extremes of budget politics in America’s largest city. When he was elected mayor in 1977, New York was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. Read More
The state's largest public union is right. Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to "smooth" pensions for local governments and school districts is "a bait-and-switch scheme ... that will allow public employers to underfund their pension obligations," as the Civil Service Employees Association described it last week. Read More
A few days before his latest state budget presentation, Gov. Cuomo did his best to dampen expectations that it would produce any surprises, telling The Post’s Fred Dicker: “I’m going to be taking it as more of an opportunity for what we can be doing affirmatively, but there’s not going to be any major problems revealed.” Read More
A sweeping but little-noticed provision in Governor Cuomo’s 2013-14 Executive Budget would, in the words of this Article VII bill memo, “eliminate all local government and school district reporting requirements to state agencies unless the Mandate Relief Council votes to continue them.” Read More
In lieu of actual mandate relief, Governor Cuomo wants to make a seemingly irresistible offer to local governments. Read More
Governor Cuomo* is running TV commercials declaring that his proposed 2013-14 budget features no new taxes — a claim also widely reflected in most news media coverage of the budget. Read More
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli just announced approval of a $3.14 billion contract for construction of a new Tappan Zee Bridge. Read More