As the MTA slashes its station clerks, tourists are lost, customers with luggage or baby carriages can't get through the "Iron Maiden" turnstiles, and New Yorkers have to wait in long lines as all of the confused people in front of them try to go thr Read More
The Institute for Justice, which argued the landmark Kelo case before the Supreme Court nearly five years ago, has a new out that calls New York "perhaps the worst state in the nation when it comes to eminent domain abuse -- the forcible ac Read More
It took a state-appointed financial control board to freeze salaries of Buffalo city employees, but once the 38-month freeze ended, employees argued they should be elevated to higher salary steps they would have achieved if there not been a freeze. In a case that should be watched by other financially squeezed municipalities, the Buffalo Fiscal Stability Authority will ask the state Court of Appeals to overturn lower court decisions granting higher steps to employees (here). Read More
Former New York Liberal Party boss Ray Harding pleaded guilty yesterday in the ongoing and on-growing Albany pension-fund-hedge-fund corruption scandal, admitting that he "accepted more than $800,000 in exchange for doing favors for Alan G. Hevesi, Read More
Governor Paterson today that he was ordering state agencies to cut their budgets by $500 million to help in dealing with a current-year state deficit of between $2.1 billion (the official forecast as of late July) and $3 billion (the governor's own Read More
, Nicole spotlights the troubling implications of the hot-and-heavy political love affair between City Comptroller (and would-be mayor) William Thompson and Local 100 of the Transit Workers Union (TWU). Her bottom line: New Yorkers ne Read More
A toll road built nearly a decade ago under an innovative public-private partnership model is seeing its financial woes deepen. The problems of the Connector 2000 toll road project in South Carolina are yet another sign that it's going to be hard Read More
Peter Applebome's encapsulates conventional wisdom about the cause of high property taxes in New York City's suburban counties. While tipping his hat to the power of public employee unions, Abblebome gets distracted by some of the usual suspects. Read More
It's increasingly clear that the federal government's "Build America Bonds" program, part of the stimulus, was a backdoor bailout for California. Under the program, states can issue taxable bonds, with the federal government reimbursing them for the Read More
Could New York’s state government realize significant savings by encouraging private-sector firms to challenge entrenched public-sector monopolies? Read More
In the middle of its worst economic downturn since the 1930s, New York State has just enacted its biggest personal income-tax hike since 1961. Read More
Former Navy Secretary John Lehman has a good in today's Post on the importance of competition in government partnerships with the private sector, even on long, complex contracts that don't seem to lend themselves to competition. Lehman n Read More