New York’s rising unemployment rate is “presenting a challenge for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo as he tries to build an image as a fiscal centrist who can transform the state’s business climate,” today’s New York Times reports. Read More
Research
Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2011-12 edition of What They Make, the Empire Center’s annual report on public payrolls, allows New York taxpayers to compare this key element of local government costs around the state. Read More
Medicaid, America’s safety-net program for more than 62 million low-income uninsured Americans, is broken. It’s broken at the state level, where program costs are swamping state budgets. Read More
Wall Street, the goose that laid golden eggs for New York’s public sector for more than 25 years before the Great Recession, is “still working through the fallout from the financial crisis,” as Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reported earlier this week... Read More
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has jumped on the bandwagon in favor of raising New York City’s top resident income tax rate — just a day after two undeclared 2013 mayoral candidates, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and then-City Comptroller William Thompson stepped (somewhat gingerly) off it. Read More
New York ranks 50th — meaning “worst” — in the Tax Foundation’s 2013 State Business Tax Index, released today. The Empire State’s ranking tumbled back to last place after climbing all the way up to number 48 in the 2011 Index. Read More
So it’s unanimous: All five of the leading prospective Democratic candidates for mayor are now on record in support of raising New York City’s top income tax rate. Read More
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn has her eye on the other half of City Hall. In her current position, she already represents New Yorkers. So why does she feel so powerless that she supports outside action to force the city to do stuff -- when she is the city? Read More
The latest mergers & acquisitions figures are out, and they're not pretty. According to mergermarket, an M&A data watcher, the year's global slowdown is not only continuing but accelerating. New York can hang on to a thread of good news only in that its rate of decline is not accelerating. Read More
The slow-motion process of developing state regulations to allow natural gas hydro-fracking in upstate New York seems to have reached stall speed, now that Governor Andrew Cuomo has ordered up a new health impact review that could force the Department of Environmental Conservation to miss a Nov. 29 deadline for issuing fracking rules. Read More
In his controversial "47 percent" remarks, Mitt Romney nailed one fact: Nearly half of Americans do not pay income tax. Read More
Employment and wage growth between March 2011 and March 2012 was below the national average in most of New York’s largest counties, according to the quarterly census of employment and wages released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics... Read More