The Post's Fred Dicker today that Paterson administration budget officials now believe New York State's 2008-09 budget gap will be in the neighborhood of $7 billion, up from a projected $5.5 billion in the wake of the Legislature's August s Read More
The story from today’s papers with the biggest potential long-term impact on New York’s economy doesn’t even contain the words “New York.” That’s Gillian Tett’s FT piece on global investors’ assessment of the credit of the United States of America. Read More
This report reviews the impact of federal tax cuts on New York State since 2001 and looks at how the Empire State would be affected by the sharply divergent tax policy agendas of the 2008 presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. Estimates are provided for the direct New York impact of the candidates’ principal individual income tax proposals over the next two years. Read More
The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and yesterday's 500- point drop in the Dow may yet prove to be the turning point in a long-overdue shakeout. If the optimists are right, a stronger and smarter securities industry will eventually emerge from the ruins of the last few months. Read More
Earlier in this decade, the last major change in federal tax policy helped bail New York out of its last Wall Street downturn. Will Washington help or hurt the city this time around? Read More
The financial-market implosion and the coming transformation of the securities industry will expose the fundamental flaw in New York State’s woefully overextended public finance model. The state budget is today geared to run on an ever-expanding stream of high-octane revenues from a Wall Street that no longer exists—and the rest of New York’s economy isn’t nearly robust enough to make up the difference. Read More
LAST week's state Senate approval of Gov. Paterson's proposed cap on school property taxes seems to have induced a nervous breakdown in the powerful statewide teachers' union. Read More
GOV. Paterson has pledged the state will "learn to do more with less" in closing a projected $6.4 billion gap in the 2009-10 fiscal year. Read More
When Nelson Rockefeller was born 100 years ago today, New York state was America's economic powerhouse - with its best years still ahead. Read More
Healthy skepticism was warranted back in January, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer first announced he would name a special commission to recommend a cap on school property taxes. Sure, the governor's rhetoric was tough and right on the mark. And he was embracing an idea he'd rejected during his 2006 gubernatorial run - and choosing his primary opponent, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi to chair the commission, ensuring this would at least be a high-profile effort. Read More
Retirees' benefits are the fastest-growing part of overall health-coverage costs for New York state and local government. They're already nearly 40 percent of the state's employee-health budget, and they'll consume more than a third of the roughly $3.5 billion New York City will spend on health benefits this year. Read More
Nearly a month after passing the state budget, the state Legislature finally got around to disclosing important details of nearly $150 million in pork-barrel "member item" allocations last week. Read More