Research

Long Island's State Senate and Assembly members are patting themselves on the back for having blocked a revival of the commuter tax. But they also have provided the pivotal bloc of legislative support for a big state income tax hike that will transfer more of the Island's wealth to places like Binghamton and Buffalo. Read More

Labor unions and their allies in New York's burgeoning health and social services sector are demanding new taxes on the wealthy to help close the state's $12 billion budget gap. After all, the argument goes, it's only fair to ask those who gained the most from the economic boom to bail the rest of us out of this bust. Read More

With New York's future at risk, Gov. Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg are taking sharply contrasting approaches to closing huge budget gaps. Or are they? Read More

Governor Pataki's 2003-04 budget proposal calls for smaller spending cuts than the budgets he proposed during his first two years in office—even though the current budget gap is more than twice as large. Read More

Given his Rockefeller Lite persona in recent years, no one would have been surprised if New York's Governor George E. Pataki had responded to a looming fiscal crisis with a round of tax increases, if not on the scale of Democrat Gray Davis's gargantuan $8 billion hike in California, then something like Republican John Rowland's soak-the-rich surcharge in Connecticut. Read More

Which key sector of New York's economy has experienced a deep slump that is largely to blame for recent state and city revenue shortfalls? And which sector of New York's economy will benefit the most from President Bush's new tax proposal? Read More

Just how big is the New York City Transit Authority's deficit? The answer to that question appears to be (a) not nearly as big as the NYCTA would have had everyone believe going into the TWU talks, but also (b) not nearly as big as it will be once the Authority gets through paying for the wage and benefit increases in the new transit workers contract—unless a fare increase is approved soon. Read More

If the new transit workers deal is used as the “pattern” in the next round of collective bargaining with New York's public employee unions, the result would be $725 million in added labor costs for the state and $1.2 billion a year in added costs for the city, not including any offsetting productivity concessions. Read More

New York City’s impending property tax hike will lead to the loss of another 62,000 private sector jobs, re-accelerating a downward economic spiral that dates back to the end of 2000, according to a forecast by the Manhattan Institute's econometric model. Read More

Facing an uphill battle in Albany to win renewal of New York City's former commuter tax, the Bloomberg administration is floating a new "tax reform" idea that can only be described as breathtakingly wrongheaded. Read More

Safely assured of a third term as governor of New York, George Pataki must tackle the state's worst fiscal mess in at least a dozen years. Effective today, Albany's official tune on budget matters changes from "Don't Worry, Be Happy" to "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall." Read More