Taxpayer-funded employer contributions to public pensions in New York State will rise by billions of dollars in the next few years, threatening to divert scarce resources from other essential public services in the midst of a fiscal crisis, according to a new report from the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
Public pension costs in New York are mushrooming—just when taxpayers can least afford it. Over the next five years, tax-funded annual contributions to the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS) will more than quadruple, while contributions to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) will more than double, according to estimates presented in this report. Read More
Advocates of the misnamed “millionaire’s tax” enacted in New York State last year claimed that it would restore “fairness” to a tax code that favored the rich. Read More
The challenges confronting Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo won’t be limited to closing a state budget gap now estimated at between $9 billion and $11 billion. Cuomo and the Legislature will also need to respond to growing fiscal distress among New York’s local governments. Read More
For all of Andrew Cuomo’s good intentions, Albany’s muck remains as deep as ever, with a projected 2010-11 state budget shortfall approaching $10 billion. But the fiscal quicksand needn’t swallow up the next Gov. Cuomo as it did the last one. Read More
Will Andrew Cuomo defy the special interests that have long controlled Al bany -- starting with the public-sector labor unions whose political arm endorsed him -- to deliver the kind of change he promised in his successful campaign for governor of New York? Read More
Two cities in heavily taxed Niagara County have agreed to share the burden of providing water services. But the deal first needed to get around objections from a municipal labor union. Read More
Tonight’s seven-way, 90-minute New York guber natorial debate sounds more like the premise for a TV reality show than a forum for airing the most critical issues facing the Empire State. Read More
New York's public-sector employees have been promised $205 billion in post-retirement health benefits that the state and its local governments have set aside no money to pay for, a new Empire Center report found. Read More
New York state and local governments’ liabilities for retiree health coverage run to the hundreds of billions of dollars -- a burden that’s only now coming into full view. Read More
Like a leaky faucet, New York state was drip-drip- dripping businesses and jobs to other states for all but one of the 15 years leading up to the official end of the last economic expansion in 2007. Read More
Employment statistics are the leading indicator of what’s happening in New York State’s economy. However, traditional government job counts don’t tell us much about the underlying dynamics of job creation. Information on openings and closings, expansions and contractions, and interstate movements by employer “establishments” in New York has not been as readily available – until now. Read More