New York’s ranking in the Tax Foundation’s 2012 State Business Tax Climate Index is second to last, just ahead of New Jersey.  Our climate ranked 49th — second worst — in 2011, and we’re 49th again in the new index.  California was ranked just above New York at 48th.

The state’s business tax climate didn’t improve in Andrew Cuomo’s first year as governor, according to the Tax Foundation. To the contrary: while our overall ranking didn’t change, New York’s index “score” actually declined, thanks to the December 2011 income tax increase pushed through by Cuomo under the guise of “fairness reform.” (more…)

Just-released November data indicate that Medicaid spending was within Governor Cuomo’s new cap through the first two-thirds of fiscal 2011-12 — but just barely.

The $15.3 billion cap on state-funded Medicaid spending within the Department of Health (DOH) was a hallmark of Cuomo’s budget control and reform for fiscal 2011-12. Future annual growth is supposed to be limited to the 4 percent average rate of medical cost inflation over the last 10 years.

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Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver may seek a pay hike for members of the New York State Legislature before the year is out, today’s New York Post reports.  New York part-time lawmakers now make a base salary of $79,500 a year, plus $171 for every day in Albany and added stipends for leadership positions and committee chairmanships. The speaker’s own pay is $120,000 plus expenses.

As of 2011, New York’s legislative compensation was the third highest of any state. For details, see our Data Bank here.

There was virtually nothing new in Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s speech on public pensions in Washington, D.C., yesterday — nothing the comptroller hasn’t said before, as recently as a month ago.

What is new, of course, is the context. Now that Governor Andrew Cuomo is backing some meaningful pension reforms, DiNapoli will be more visible as head cheerleader for the public pension status quo.  (City Comptroller John Liu has been waving his poms-poms furiously, too.)

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… must be next to the worst airport terminal in the world (ranking from Frommer’s).

This just in: Governor Cuomo’s 2012-13 Executive Budget has been posted online, and it does, indeed, include a 401(1)k-style defined-contribution (DC) retirement plan option.

Last year, the Governor proposed a “Tier 6″ pension plan that simply made adjustments to the existing defined-benefit (DB) pension system — raising retirement ages, extending the vesting period, boosting employee contributions, curbing use of overtime to pad pensions.

Today’s proposal is a big improvement.

On the DB side of the ledger, a key modification to the original proposal is a ” variable ‘risk/reward’ system under which employee contributions would decrease or increase, within limits, tied to economic conditions.” In addition, the new DB system would feature staggered schedule of employee contributions, ranging from 3 percent to 6 percent depending on salary level, with higher salaries paying more.

The “voluntary” 401(1)k-style plan would include a minimum employer contribution of 4 percent, which could increase to a maximum of 7 percent if the employee matches with a 3 percent contribution, bringing potential annual retirement savings to 11 10 percent. This, the Budget Message notes, would “offer a portability and (early) vesting feature not available with defined-benefit options.”

More details are to be found in Part H of this bill. Or, if you prefer, the bill memo.

Suffice to say, it’s a very big deal that Cuomo has put the DC concept on the table.  The new “risk-reward” component of his DB reform is also noteworthy, because it gets at the heart of the problem — the one-sided assumption of financial risk by taxpayers.

Governor Cuomo’s 2012-13 budget, to be presented later today, will command media attention for the rest of the week. Advance reports on his modified pension reform proposal are especially promising. Meanwhile, there’s a (fiscally) cost-free approach to helping local governments and school districts alleviate their budget problems: repealing the Triborough Amendment.

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Mayor Bloomberg’s latest ed-reform plan has gotten much attention.

To get the teachers’ union to support merit pay, Bloomberg proposes to give teachers a salary hike of $20,000 if they prove “highly effective” for two years in a row under a new teacher-evaluation scheme.

As the mayor put it, “we’ll … work to retain the best teachers — by offering them a big raise.” (more…)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has joined Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in advocating an increase in the state minimum wage.  Unlike Silver, Bloomberg in his State of the City message was at least willing to acknowledge that the minimum wage discourages hiring–specifically, that it “can reduce youth employment.”  His solution?  More government-subsidized summer job programs.  Because, after all, “the genius of the free market is not always perfect.”  (But it comes pretty close!)

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Let’s make a deal - you give me $650 today, and five years from now I’ll give you $10,000 back.  That incredible return on investment is what some forward-thinking federal agencies are offering taxpayers, according to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Commerce and NARA are working together to create:

[A] multi-agency FOIA portal that automates FOIA processing and reporting, sores FOIA requests and responses in a repository and keeps records electronically.

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