Irene's wrath spared few throughout the state, from the eastern end of Long Island to the upper reaches of the Adirondacks. While the lower Hudson Valley saw its share of flooding, power outages and downed trees, the area was fortunately saved from the complete devastation seen in the Catskill Mountains of Greene County, the Mohawk Valley west of Albany and the tiny, tight-knit towns south of the Canadian border. But communities in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam still have plenty of work ahead of them as dozens of homes, businesses and roads were wrecked, some beyond repair. Compounding the…

Cash-strapped local governments looking for relief from burdensome state mandates will have to wait at least another couple of years. State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli this week announced that pension contributions for government employees will once again rise significantly in the 2012-13 fiscal year, due largely to losses incurred during the near-crash of the stock market in 2008. "I remain confident that our long-term investment strategy will help us to weather this volatile economic environment," DiNapoli said in a statement, noting the pension increases are not as great as they were over the…

As part of a larger bid to rein in New York's spending and root out inefficiencies at every level of government, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has zeroed in on the salaries and benefits of state workers, teachers, school superintendents and judges, winning historic accords from the state's largest public-sector unions along the way. Now the freshman is turning his focus to executives at nonprofit groups funded by taxpayer dollars, almost 2,000 of whom are making six-figure salaries. Critics, including Cuomo, say nonprofits have a particular responsibility to make sacrifices for the people they serve. "…

The finances of the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which operates New York's subways and suburban train network, are under renewed scrutiny as a search gets underway to find a new chief at the beleaguered agency. Local lawmakers are stepping up calls for the state to conduct an in-depth audit of the MTA, which has yet to be done despite 2009 legislation authorizing it, and for the repeal of a controversial payroll tax that critics say is killing job creation and fueling property tax increases. At a press conference Monday, Sen. Greg Ball (R-Patterson) and Assemblyman Steve Katz (R-…

New York's law granting marriage rights to same-sex couples has only been in effect for a week, but advocates on both sides of the issue have wasted no time taking their arguments to court. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has filed court papers charging that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional on a number of fronts, including an "unprecedented intrusion" on the right of states to regulate marriage. DOMA, passed in 1996, has been under heightened scrutiny since the Obama administration announced in …

As temperatures soared into the triple digits last week, the decade-long battle over raises for state judges also began to heat up. The 1,200-plus judges who sit on county, surrogate, family, and supreme courts across New York have not received raises since 1999, when their pay was increased to $136,700. That's largely because their salaries were tied to those of state lawmakers, who have found it politically untenable to give themselves raises. But that bind was broken by a law passed last year which also called for the creation of a seven-member panel, called the Commission on Judicial …

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a group of local lawmakers gathered on the lawn of a Pleasantville home last week to symbolically sign legislation creating the state's first cap on annual property tax increases. The signing was at the home of Russell and Tara Klein, who said they pay more than $16,000 in property taxes each year. The Kleins are far from alone. Westchester is one of the highest-taxed counties in the nation, with a median property tax bill of $8,500. That's in comparison to a state average of $3,700 and more than four times the national figure of $1,900. Cuomo and other advocates of the …

Amidst the passage of a slate of historic legislation, including the legalization of same-sex marriage, a property tax cap and expanded rent-control laws, lawmakers last week quietly approved a bill that would empower school districts to borrow up to $1 billion to cover increases in the costs of employee pensions. In New York, shortfalls in the state pension fund are closed with taxpayer money. The perfect storm of the recession and a growing number of pensioners as Baby Boomers reach retirement age has significantly spiked the pension burden for school districts statewide. The bill, which …

Repealing a controversial payroll tax that benefits the cash-strapped and scandal-scarred Metropolitan Transit Authority has been one of the top priorities of many Hudson Valley lawmakers this year, but with the session set to end this week, the proposal appears to be headed for the shelf. A bill that would gradually repeal the two-year-old tax in suburban counties, including Westchester, Rockland and Putnam, passed the Senate last week. But the measure stalled in the Assembly, where members from New York City are concerned that eliminating the tax—and the more than $800 million in revenue …

The debate over natural-gas drilling in New York has reached a higher pitch over the last two weeks as the end of a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing, or "hydrofracking," nears. In the wake of a blowout at a gas well in Pennsylvania that spilled toxic chemicals into a nearby creek, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has ordered state environmental officials to step up an ongoing probe into the alleged perils of hydrofracking, which includes pollution of drinking water and air. Their findings are expected to be released in July, and will coincide with the end of a current moratorium on new drilling permits. …

After years of debate, New York's legislative leaders and Governor Andrew Cuomo have reached a tentative agreement to place a 2 percent cap on annual property tax increases. Homeowners in the lower Hudson Valley grapple with some of the highest property tax bills in the nation, due largely to the fact that property tax revenue is used to fund local school districts. Rising taxes have been exacerbated by the rapidly increasing costs of pensions and other benefits for public employees. "I can’t tell you how many times somebody has come up to me and said, ‘You have to do something about property…

Abortion rights and women's health have been hot-button issues in Washington for years, and the debate reached a higher pitch recently as a proposal to defund Planned Parenthood became a sticking point in the federal budget battle. But the debate also has been raging on the state level, where pro-choice groups are lobbying for legislation that would protect a woman's right to choose or refuse contraception and abortion, no matter what action is taken by Congress. In New York, advocates are calling for passage of the Reproductive Health Act, a bill sponsored by Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-…

The state legislature has been scarred by ethics scandals for years, with lawmakers being charged or convicted of an array of crimes. Most recently, former Sen. Vincent Leibell, one of Putnam County's most powerful politicians, was sentenced to 21 months in prison after admitting to taking kick-backs from attorneys at a non-profit group and trying to influence a grand jury. Meanwhile, two Brooklyn lawmakers are awaiting trials amid allegations that they took more than $1 million in bribes from hospital lobbyists. To stem the tide of corruption, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had made ethics reform one of …

There was a time when the Tarrytown Urban Renewal Agency, the Peekskill Civic Center Authority and the Spring Valley Parking Authority were tasked with important missions related to economic development in their communities. But those days have long since passed, according to two local lawmakers who are pushing to dissolve more than 100 public authorities across the state that, they say, do absolutely nothing. The move is part of a larger effort, which seems to be reaching a fever pitch thanks to Gov. Andrew Cuomo, to take a microscope to state government and eliminate waste and duplication…

The price of a gallon of gas has passed the $4 mark for the first time since 2008, and the extra cash that drivers now have to pony up at the pump threatens the fragile recovery of the economy, as consumers spend less on everything else. Gas prices also threaten to put a damper on New Yorkers' summer vacation plans. Enter Sen. Greg Ball (R-Patterson) who, along with Albany-area Assemblyman Jim Tedisco, has proposed four-day "gas tax holidays" over the Memorial Day, July Fourth and Labor Day weekends. Their bill would suspend three taxes, totalling 33 cents per gallon, and, they say, save …

After media outlets across the country assailed a state plan to label age-old children's games such as freeze tag, red rover, kickball and wiffle ball as dangerous, the state Department of Health last week retracted its decision. Though the plan was panned by the media as being an extreme manifestation of the American "nanny state," the purpose of labeling the games as "significant risks of injury" was a bit more innocuous. The list was necessitated by a 2009 law, which took effect this month, designed to close a loophole that allowed day camps held indoors to escape state regulation. The law…

The federal government is having trouble passing a budget, but when it comes to drivers squinting or slowing down to read signs on streets and highways, Washington's got it covered. New regulations that were passed quietly in 2007 require all levels of government around the country, from the biggest states to the smallest villages, to ensure by 2018 that their road signs are sufficiently reflective in order to aid seniors and people driving at night. In addition, new signs will have to be printed in mixed-case lettering, instead of entirely in uppercase letters, though there is no deadline …

The DisPatch was expecting to take a look at the local impacts of a federal government shutdown this week, but that scenario was averted at the last minute by key lawmakers in Washington, who agreed on Friday night to cut spending for the remainder of the year by $38 billion. Federal employees—and anyone who was planning to visit the Smithsonian this week—can breath a sigh of relief. Instead, we'll take a quick peek at what's to come out of Albany during the remainder of the legislative session, which ends in June. Lawmakers have said that two of their top priorities are the extension of rent…

At the heart of the 2008 financial crisis were millions of mortgages that had been chopped up into tiny pieces and sold to investment banks around the world, who then folded the loans into mutual funds and other investment vehicles.  The problem was that a vast number of those mortgages were sub-prime, meaning the borrowers had poor credit and, by many accounts, should never have been granted the loans in the first place. Those loans, in essence, were destined from the start to end in default. Compounding that was a new type of exotic financial product, called a credit default swap, that was …

When disgraced former Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office in 2007, one of his pet projects was pushing for driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants. The proposal caused a furor across the country, with opponents dubbing it as not only a license to drive, but to kill. They pointed to the fact that the 9/11 hijackers possessed licenses and other falsified documents. Within six weeks of floating the idea, Spitzer backtracked and conceded that the proposal was ill-conceived. Well, it now has new—and, perhaps, stronger—legs, with the introduction of a bill in the Senate last week that would grant …