It seems you can find out just about anything you want to know about schools in New York -- at least when it comes to searching for data.
The state provides information collected from the school districts on everything from attendance to suspensions to dropouts to graduation to test scores. [...]
The regularly scheduled session of the New York State Legislature ended this year with no last-minute deals, a lot of unresolved issues and bitter recriminations from Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.
It wasn’t that much different from legislative sessions past, except that in some years lawmakers are [...]
There wasn’t much press coverage statewide of a recent big decision by the state Senate – all but one of its 62 members voted for a bill to eliminate school property taxes.
What?! Isn’t this a huge deal? School property taxes are the bane of many a homeowner, and the Senate [...]
Nearly half of schools in New York were recently recognized by the state Education Department as high performers. Why that was so was not immediately clear from the news coverage of the event.
Most of the stories repeated the language from the Ed Department’s news release. The schools were designated, they [...]
Just how many men (and women) should be in the room when state leaders try to negotiate a budget, or anything else?
For years, we New Yorkers have been complaining about Albany’s “three men in a room” custom, which brings together the governor, Assembly speaker and Senate leader into a back [...]
Talks on reforming New York’s campaign-finance system recently fell apart in Albany. No surprise there. Of all the possible government reforms, campaign finance could be the most unpopular among legislators, perhaps running even with nonpartisan redistricting.
The reason is obvious. These two powers – to raise buckets of campaign cash and [...]
New York is an old state. That gives us a proud history to reflect upon, from the rising of the New York City as the world’s financial capital to the birth of social reforms and protections for workers to the construction of public engineering marvels like the Erie Canal.
It also [...]
A couple months ago, I suggested that New York might be better off with a late budget than an on-time one. I wondered if our new governor, Eliot Spitzer, might conclude that winning concessions on the budget might be worth the political cost of breaking the two-year record of “timely” [...]
In the increasingly heated battle over health-care funding in Albany, health interests are using plays from their traditional playbook, while Gov. Eliot Spitzer is employing some new and unusual tactics.
Hospital lobby groups brought some 3,000 workers to the Capitol to protest more than $1 billion in spending reductions proposed by [...]
In the increasingly heated battle over health-care funding in Albany, health interests are using plays from their traditional playbook, while Gov. Eliot Spitzer is employing some new and unusual tactics.
Hospital lobby groups brought some 3,000 workers to the Capitol to protest more than $1 billion in spending reductions proposed by [...]
After weeks of battling, Gov. Eliot Spitzer and legislative leaders were able to make nice and recently announce compromises on two significant issues: reform of the workers compensation system and confinement of sex offenders beyond their prison terms.
It’s encouraging to see some signs of good will among the state’s top [...]
Rochester leaders recently announced that for a second year in a row they will make a major push for more state aid to the city, the “Fair Share” campaign.
The name comes from the campaign’s central concept: that Rochester should be helped on an equitable basis to the two cities that [...]
What’s the most effective way to change a dysfunctional Legislature?
Former state Sen. Seymour Lachman visited the Center for Governmental Research last week as part of a visit to Rochester to promote his book “Three Men in a Room” about Albany gridlock and corruption. Lachman’s view is that any governor hoping [...]
Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s proposed state budget contains something for everyone.
Something to dislike, that is.
So, if you don’t like the way things have been done recently in Albany, maybe you’ll like this budget. It reminds me of my days as a newspaper reporter, when we would say that if you angered [...]
In New York, pork-barrel spending comes two ways: as cash or capital. Lawmakers fund cash pork out of current revenue and pay for capital pork out of borrowed funds. One kind of pork has gotten a lot of attention, while the other kind has been largely ignored -- even though [...]
Last week’s column drew a big response. Not that any of the reporters or citizens who contacted me were surprised to learn that Upstate New York has remarkably high property taxes. But they were startled to learn that we claim 9 of the top 10 counties in the nation in [...]
Congratulations, Monroe County taxpayers! We pay the second-highest property taxes in the country, calculated as a percentage of home value.
Our median property taxes are $3,266, and our median home value is $119,500, meaning we pay about 2.7 percent of our home value every year as property taxes to schools, local [...]
Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office last week with an impressive combination of lofty rhetoric, decisive action and ambitious plans – not to mention more than a few jabs at the Legislature and his predecessor.
Here’s a quick summary:
He declared that we would become “One New York” -- no longer divided [...]
