News

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New York State schools need an additional $7 billion a year if they are to provide every student the opportunity for a "sound basic education" as required by the state Constitution, an advocacy group said. New York City schools alone would require an additional $4

A powerful hospital workers’ union has launched what it calls a “massive” lobbying and advertising campaign pressuring Governor Pataki and the Legislature to impose up to $2.8 billion in new taxes on businesses, to pay for new hospital projects and another major expansion of taxpayer-funded health care

The state Assembly has approved a bill that would renew, with substantial changes, Article X of the state Public Service Law, which governs how power plants are sited. The Council opposes this bill. The Assembly’s plan would modify the lapsed Article X law

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has proposed broad reforms for New York's budget process, including requiring public authorities to submit their budget information to the legislature for review, moving all off-budget spending under the state's Health Care Reform Act (HCRA) onto the state budget, and increasing by 5 percent the money that goes to the state's rainy-day fund

The Legislature should raise business taxes and fees by more than $1 billion to pump additional spending into the budget proposed by Governor Pataki, a union-funded think tank says. The proposal, which would boost overall corporate income tax revenue by at least 50 percent, comes from the Fiscal Policy Institute (FPI), which successfully pushed for the $2 billion increase in personal-income taxes the Legislature enacted in 2003

The Business Council has adopted policy priorities for the 2004 legislative session that emphasize opposition to new taxes, support for energy policies that ensure an ample supply of affordable and reliable electricity, workers' compensation reform, steps to improve small businesses' access to affordable health care, and more user-friendly environmental policies

The proportion of workers in New York who belong to unions continued to drop in 2003, but the state remains the most heavily unionized in the nation, according to a new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, union membership dropped from 13

New York City will need to increase its electricity capacity by 25 percent over the next four years, according to a new report by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s energy policy task force. The city must have a dependable source of electricity to maintain its position as the financial, corporate and communications capital of the world, the report said

Governor George Pataki's 2004-05 budget grows spending at about twice the rate of inflation, according to an analysis by the Manhattan Institute. "And in all probability, the Legislature will add even more to this amount before the budget is finally adopted," the report said