Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2012-13 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
Key state lawmakers are introducing what would be the largest state bond issue in New York’s history — a $5 billion environmental bond act. Read More
The Tax Foundation has posted a nifty interactive map depicting “Migration of Personal Income” among the states. Based on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) data, the foundation says net migration from New York between 2000 and 2010 translated into a net loss of $45.6 billion of income. Read More
Reportedly, the terms of a tentative agreement between the teachers' union and board of education in Westchester's Bedford Central School District would do away with step increases for newly hired teachers. Read More
A full package of basic welfare benefits in New York State is now worth $38,004 — seventh highest among those offered by the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to The Work vs. Welfare Trade-Off, a study released today by the Cato Institute. Read More
Reflecting the drop in overall inflation over the past year, the state-imposed cap on property taxes will be 1.66 percent for counties, cities, towns and villages with fiscal years that start Jan. 1, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office has informed local officials. Read More
By a variety of measures, New York is easily the nation's most heavily taxed big city. In devising a strategy for competing economically on both a global and regional basis, New York’s next mayor needs to recognize that the city can’t tax with impunity... Read More
Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned last week that if New York City fails to control unsustainable employee compensation costs, it could find itself trapped in the same "downward cycle" as bankrupt Detroit... Read More
No city in America can match New York’s broad array of taxes—more typical of a state than of a municipal government. Most New York City residents and businesses are subject to combined state and local tax rates far exceeding national norms. Such high taxes are a headwind against economic growth: they add to overhead, cut into profits, and make it costlier to employ people. Read More
A post on this blog three days ago passed along statistics interpreted here to mean that New York “is leading the nation in private and public jobs lost to layoffs.” But that passage turns out to have been seriously misleading, to say the least. Read More
Eliot Spitzer did some huge favors for the state’s largest public employee union when he was governor, so it’s no surprise that the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) has endorsed him in his race for New York City comptroller. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo has little hope of closing the state’s projected budget gaps over the next few years if he doesn’t continue to clamp a tight lid on state operations costs — and to that end, he’s pushing for the closure and consolidation of more state prisons and institutions for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. Read More