News

18
Dec
2002
The state Senate has approved a bill to extend the state's current law governing the siting of power plants until July of 2007. Article X of the state's Public Service Law is due to expire Dec. 31. The Business Council has strongly advocated improvements to Article X that will accelerate the plant siting process and make it easier for the state to add the new generating capacity it needs
18
Dec
2002
A new poll of New York voters shows that New Yorkers by a significant margin prefer cuts in government to higher taxes, as Albany deals with the state's current fiscal challenges. More than half of New Yorkers polled (52 percent) said the state should cut services to balance the budget, a poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute poll showed
17
Dec
2002
A new study offers new evidence that New York's competitiveness would improve if it cut its overall tax burden, government debt, and other costs of job creation, including workers' compensation and electricity costs
13
Dec
2002
New York State's Medicaid spending has grown almost twice as fast as aid to schools since fiscal 1988 and even faster compared to spending on higher education, a Dec. 13 fiscal analysis by The Public Policy Institute of New York State shows
10
Dec
2002
Although total government spending in New York is too high, New York ranks dead last among all states in investing in higher education, one area of spending that is critical to the state's economic future, a new fiscal analysis from The Public Policy Institute of New York State shows
06
Dec
2002
New York's public debt is the nation's second highest on a per capita basis, 88 percent above the national average - which means that more government borrowing to address New York's coming fiscal challenge would be unwise, a new fiscal analysis from The Public Policy Institute of New York State shows
03
Dec
2002
Local taxes that are 63 percent above the national average are New York's top competitive disadvantage, and history suggests that more state aid to localities won't fix the problem, a new fiscal analysis by The Public Policy Institute of New York State shows
27
Nov
2002
Nearly half of all states are responding to budget challenges in the current fiscal year by reducing state spending in net enacted budgets, a new analysis shows. The National Governors Association (NGA) and the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) released their biannual report, The Fiscal Survey of States, on Nov
27
Nov
2002
The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that oversees the nation's labor relations law, has expressed "serious concerns" about the legality of state's new "labor neutrality law" - the same concerns The Business Council voiced last summer in vigorously opposing the union-backed bill
26
Nov
2002
How the state created the current state budget offers a strong case for spending restraint in dealing with the state's current fiscal challenge - because only spending restraint in previous years made this year's $5 billion spending increase possible, the latest state budget analysis by The Public Policy Institute of New York State shows