Larry Schwartz Makes More Than The Governor

Payday with a new boss
ALBANY -- Larry Schwartz takes home more state money than Gov. Andrew Cuomo does. In fact, the former secretary to Gov. David Paterson -- now a "senior adviser" tasked with reforming the Budget process -- makes more than everyone else in the administration's inner circle. That's because Cuomo's order to reduce the new pay for incoming staff members by 5 percent did not apply to Schwartz or other holdovers from the Paterson administration. That means Schwartz retains his $178,000 Salary from his ...

Morning Read: You Don't Get Do-Overs in Life
The city got blanketed with nine inches of snow. The subways are mostly running fine This time, the city was ready: "I don't think you get do-overs in life," said Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson. "But I do think this is an opportunity to once again, as we have consistently before Christmas, demonstrate why we have the best snow-fighting force in the country." In a Lawsuit, the federal government has accused New York City of overbilling Medicaid by "at least tens of millions of dollars" by improper...

Cuomo Learns From Bloombergs Snow Mistakes
Determined not to repeat the mistakes of Mayor Bloomberg and, to a lesser extent, his predecessor, former Gov. David Paterson, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is taking pre-emptive steps to prepare for the Snow Storm baring down on NYS. Cuomo announced he has directed the state Office of Emergency Management to activate the Comprehensive Emergency Management Plan and open the State Emergency Operations Center to ensure resources and equipment from relevant agencies are ready to clear the roads and respond to...

Public Divided on Pay Cuts For State Employees
Only 40% of adults favor a 10% across the board Pay Cut for Public Employees. Government has grown so large over the last few decades, almost everyone has a friend or relative on the public Payroll. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 40% of Adults favor a 10% Pay Cut for all State Employees to help reduce state spending. Forty-one percent (41%), however, oppose an across-the-board Pay Cut like this. Nineteen percent (19%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, ...

Here And Now
SNOW!!! (The Times describes it as a “giant, amoeba-shaped” storm). NYC public schools are open. (Sorry kids). Some parents felt the Bloomberg administration/DOE took too long to make the school closing call. Mayor Bloomberg took no chances this time and declared a snow-related weather emergency long before the first flakes fell. Gov. Andrew Cuomo learned from Bloomberg’s mistakes and moved quickly to address the storm. This is Bloomberg’s shot at redemption. Cuomo ...

Ohio Congressman Stivers talks security, office and personal pay cuts
COLUMBUS, Ohio (CGE) - First-term Ohio Congressman Steve Stivers, who was sworn-in as a Member of the 112th Congress last week after beating the Democratic Candidate he lost to in 2008, is one of the 85 fresh Republican faces who helped elect another Ohio congressman, John Boehner (OH-8) of West Chester, the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Speaker Boehner was present along with Stivers to watch as Gov. John R. Kasich, who was officially was sworn-in just past midnight Monday, ...

Breslin tapped deputy leader
ALBANY -- Sen. Neil Breslin has been tapped as deputy leader of the 26-member Democratic Conference, a post that requires him to coordinate the legislative flow on the chamber floor and serve as the second-in-command to Minority Leader John Sampson, D-Brooklyn. "I think it brings honor to the County of Albany that I have been selected as deputy minority leader, but it also means that I will have a great deal of work to do to make sure that we get out of the $10 billion Deficit while at the same ...

Splitting Hairs to Give Ex-lawmakers State Jobs
By Peter J. Rudy  A year ago, State Senators Glenn Coffee and Randy Brogdon and State Representative Mike Thompson were preparing for what would be their last legislative session as elected officials.  This year, all three have jobs in State Government, despite an apparent ban on legislators taking jobs with the state within two years of holding office.  How can this happen? To determine that, first we need to take a look at the law.  Article V of the Oklahoma Constitution states in pa

Gov. Cuomo has his snow moment
Mayor Bloomberg wasn’t the only one giving a snow briefing this morning. Gov. Andrew Cuomo visited the state’s Emergency Operations Center this morning to meet with agency chiefs and brief reporters about storm management operations. “I’m here because this is my job,” Cuomo said. “This is what the Governor should be doing. This is what State Government should be doing. It should be working. It should be coordinating. It should be preparing. Agency heads should...

Efforts to clear rubbish backlog
More than 1,000 tonnes of household rubbish was collected in Birmingham over the weekend in an effort to clear the backlog, the City Council said. Bad Weather, Christmas disruption and industrial action by the binmen has led to some people in the city having no collections for up to a month. Binmen are in dispute with the council over plans to change their contracts. More strikes are planned for Thursday and Friday but the council said it had contingency plans to cope. The refuse collectors cla...

In todays economy, a lot of people skating on thin ice, and they know it
Which way shall we go? Should we talk some more about snow and ice? Or maybe we should renew the debate over who’s the bigger Victim of the Tucson shootings, the left or the right? (Forget the six people who were killed, as well as their families. These days, the only victims that we recognize are those able to whine about it publicly and endlessly.) Well, let’s see if we can find something else to talk about, shall we? The other day, Kevin Drum posed an interesting question: ...

Georgia plan would raise taxes initially
Georgians could pay more in taxes this year if lawmakers adopt new recommendations to rewrite the state’s tax code, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the proposal. Ga. Politics news, helpful links PolitiFact Georgia » Ray McBerry: "You’ll find blacks in almost every regiment throughout the South who fought right alongside white Southerners," during the Civil War. That’s because an increase in sales taxes on everything from groceries to w...

Cedillo's challenge of state officials' pay cut suffers setback
Assemblyman Gil Cedillo 's challenge of millions cut from the pay and benefits of legislators and other state elected officials in late 2009 has been tentatively rejected by the state. The Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board is releasing a staff recommendation today that Cedillo's claim be denied at its Jan. 20 public meeting, spokeswoman Janice Mackey said. Cedillo, a Los Angeles Democrat, had argued in a claim filed in November that the 18 percent pay and benefit cuts by the Cali...

Low Wages are Recessions Ugly Trademark
Wages have fallen lower and stayed low longer in this Recession than in any time since the Depression. With Unemployment at 9 percent or better for 20 months and likely to stay that way for a while, wages will continue to drop. Even the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) admits that wages for working people are heading down. In an article today, ”Downturn’s Ugly Trademark: Steep, Lasting Drop in Wages, ” the Journal reports that 54.9 percent of unemployed people who were lucky enough to ...

Sticky, sticky wages
THE Wall Street Journal's Sudeep Reddy has captured a lot of attention today with an interesting story on falling wages, the impact of a deep labour market slump. He writes: But the decline in their fortunes points to a signature outcome of the long downturn in the labor market. Even at times of high Unemployment in the past, wages have been very slow to fall; Economists describe them as "sticky." To an extent rarely seen in Recessions since the Great Depression, wages for a swath of the labor f...

UK: Inflation set for new high as pay slumps
Inflation is now running at three times the rate of public and Private Sector pay increases exposing an increasing real-terms pay slump which is threatening to derail the recovery. © Getty Images The situation for pay looks set to worsen, as the BoE's central projection is for inflation to peak at 3.6pc as the VAT increase filters into prices. New data has revealed that employees are suffering painful real-term Pay Cuts as Salary increases fail to keep up with the rate at which prices ar...

How former New York Times News Service staffers are doing
The department was outsourced to Gainesville, Fla. about a year ago. Nine of the 31 people in the department are still employed by The Times, reports Kenneth M. Walsh. “Of the 22 others, only five now have full-time jobs. And all five took sizable Pay Cuts.” Chatham.Patch.com: Employees at three Gannett papers were told Monday that their newsroom staffing will be cut in half. New York Times Co. rolls back salaries by 5% Help! for Writers Live chat today: Why do we need more women i...

Wildlife Wednesday The Portu-Goose!
By Phil of Phil's Stock World " Portugal will not request Financial Aid for the simple reason that it’s not necessary " – Socrates Of course, that was Jose Socrates, Portugal’s Prime Minister, not Σωκρτης the great Philospoher, who was more famous for saying "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil" as well as "True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing." More apropos for this morning is ...

The White House's problem with the wealthy
I just can’t let this slip by, folks, without commenting on the recent announcement by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs that he’s leaving his post very soon.   Apparently, Gibbs is burnt out, and he needs to recharge his batteries in anticipation of a major slug-fest come 2012. There’s no question Gibbs is good, and one of the best defenders of this president and his administration’s policies. He’s probably due some time away from the heat lamp that is the White

Newark Crime Is Accelerating After Major Cuts To Police Force
Email Sent! You have successfully emailed the post. What's going on in Newark right now is deeply depressing: Forced to cut the police Budget due to the same tax constraints affecting lots of American cities, Newark is seem crime accelerate. There was a 60% jump in carjackings in 2010, and huge chunk of those came at the end of the year, when the police Layoffs hit the city. The pace is now comparable to where it was in the 90s, when the city was known for carjackings. Newark gets a lot of posi...

New plan would raise taxes initially
Georgians could pay more in taxes this year if lawmakers adopt new recommendations to rewrite the state’s tax code, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis of the proposal. Ga. legislative issues to watch Ga. Politics news, helpful links PolitiFact Georgia » Ray McBerry: "You’ll find blacks in almost every regiment throughout the South who fought right alongside white Southerners," during the Civil War. That’s because an increase in sales taxes ...

Racino Owners: Hold Off On Catskills Casino - UPDATED
Now that David Paterson's out of the Governor's office, the state's racino owners are pushing back against the eleventh-hour deal he struck to clear the way for an Indian-run casino in Sullivan County, saying if it gets built, it will drastically cut into their business and cost jobs. The letter below also calls on the state leaders to ask the Federal Department of the Interior to stop its mandated 45-day review of the compact until the state can re-evaluate the financials. Efforts ...

Cruising the Web
Timothy Carney points out that the vision of Democrats voting for the Health Care bill and risking their jobs is not the profile in courage it might seem. There are always those high-paying jobs working as a Lobbyist on Health Care issues waiting for them. Oh my, a Democratic congressman said that the Republican Candidate for Florida, now Governor Rick Scott, deserves to we ought to put him "against the wall and shoot him." If we're going to blame political discourse, there is going to be a whol...

Sen. John DeFrancisco Discusses The Budget
This entry was posted by Michael Johnson on January 10, 2011 at 9:35 pm, and is filed under Video - Interviews. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. The STATE of POLITICS blog is a running statewide conversation about NY politics - the debate and the drama, the victories and defeats. We invite you to be part of the discussion. Please share your comments on our posts or (please!) send us a news tip. DO...

Sen. Bonacic Discusses Senate Rules
This entry was posted by Michael Johnson on January 10, 2011 at 9:16 pm, and is filed under Video - Interviews. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. The STATE of POLITICS blog is a running statewide conversation about NY politics - the debate and the drama, the victories and defeats. We invite you to be part of the discussion. Please share your comments on our posts or (please!) send us a news tip. DO...