A year ago this week, Gov. David A. Paterson announced his support for a broad cap on school property taxes across New York - the key recommendation of a tax relief commission chaired by Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi. Read More
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Last year, after Lehman Brothers collapsed, Mayor Bloomberg signed 4 percent annual raises for two years for the city's biggest civilian union, DC-37, even as it was obvious that such raises were unaffordable. The mayor is planning to repeat this fea Read More
City comptroller Bill Thompson -- who's also running for mayor -- released that termed the city's fiscal outlook "extremely sobering." The most sobering aspect is the extent to which New York has allowed its dependence on Wall Street to transform i Read More
New York state’s pension system lost 26 percent on its investments and shrunk by a net $45 billion in fiscal 2008-09, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli disclosed last week. Read More
Despite a crushing recession and a $45 billion drop in the state pension fund, Albany’s 2009 legislative hopper includes dozens of proposals to enhance the retirement benefits of New York State and local government employees. Read More
Deposed Metropolitan Transportation Authority chief Elliot Sander has an in today's Times in which he notes that "with the Legislature's political support for labor negotiations, the agency would be better positioned to conduct serious an Read More
, in addition to an average 10 percent reduction already experienced by employees under an unpaid furlough program. Meanwhile, in New York, most state workers just received a 3 percent wage increase, and . At least 42 state lawmakers, in Read More
Governor Paterson he will veto "any legislation this year that calls for more spending." Well, that's a relief. But what does he mean by "spending"? Tough spending restraint?[/capti Read More
Following in the footsteps of the owners of a small Buffalo area company have announced that New York State's income tax hike is prompting them to move to Florida -- except, unlike Golisano, they are also taking their entire company with them. Read More
The New York Times Broadway's theater owners and producers "fought vigorously and successfully ... to block a new state tax on theater tickets ... [y]et at the same time, they were quietly imposing a new fee of their own on patrons of Broa Read More
New York State's Dedicated Highway and Bridge Trust Fund (DHBTF) was created in 1992 to provide a sustainable source of financing for ongoing transportation maintenance needs. But since the mid-1990s, an increasing share of the fund's revenues--pri Read More
Governor Paterson the means in the current fiscal year, which is less than two months old. In other words, the short-term outlook may now be as lousy as Read More