Democrats in the New Jersey Legislature--as well as the state's new Republican governor--are giving a cold shoulder to once powerful public employee unions. The unions, "long seen as a potent political force and often depicted as an 800-pound gorilla looming over the Statehouse, are running short.. Read More
Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln released her bill for derivatives reform last week. It contains a nugget of good news for state and local taxpayers. The bill would require dealers in the oft-complex business of interest rate and other "swaps," largely... Read More
More than 15,000 Judicial Branch employees apparently are exempt from Governor David Paterson's temporary pay freeze (here). The Albany Times Union reported Tuesday that pay checks of most nonjudicial employees will be fattened with 4 percent... Read More
hile a relatively small number of taxpayers are shouldering the lion's share of the federal, state and city income tax burden, everyone will soon be footing a bigger bill for rising government spending. Nicole explains... Read More
City Comptroller John Liu was asked at a Crain's NY Breakfast last week whether he would favor shifting future municipal employees from a defined-benefit pension system to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution system. His reply, according to Crain's Insider... Read More
... this week, but what the state did with the money it reaped during the bubble(s). Factoids: Between 1993, the year (roughly) before the tech boom started, and 2007, the last year of the credit bubble, New York State personal-income tax collections... Read More
Unions not surprisingly don't like salary freezes, which are increasingly popular with elected officials as the New York state, its municipalities and school districts struggle with red ink. Freezing wages, union officials argue, violates... Read More
Saying "the state has run out of money," Governor David Paterson is withholding scheduled 4 percent raises for 137,500 state employees until the Legislature enacts a state budget that closes a $9 billion budget gap. Judging from budget developments, state workers may have to wait.. Read More
School districts that freeze employee salaries would get more state aid under a plan being considered by Albany lawmakers. This, of course, would require unions representing... Read More
Patrick M. Regan, a political science professor at Binghamton University, says his union--United University Professions--should agree to forgo 4 percent pay raises in July. In a op-ed in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, Regan writes... Read More
Would the "comprehensive reforms" unveiled today by the state Senate's Majority Democrats "fix the state’s broken budget process and give New Yorkers a fiscally responsible budget," as they claim? Of course not. There are, however, some good ideas... Read More
That's the provocative title of a Working Paper newly posted on the website of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The answer, in a word, is "yes." The co-authors of the paper, which focuses on strikes by nurses in New York between 1984... Read More