In your morning round-up, New York State is trolling for dollars.
Karen Dewitt reports from Albany that Comptroller DiNapoli has released a plan to reform state pensions - which currently cost New York a lot of money.
His proposal would tackle a loophole that's letting some government employees retire from city jobs, get salaried positions with the state, but still collect their full municipal pensions.
"We've either found through audits or press reports or whistleblowers, situations where people have exceeded what they are allowed to earn," said DiNapoli. . There is a law in place that limits state workers from collecting full pensions while working in another job for the state- limiting the amount that can be earned in the new job to $30,000, or the worker has to forgo part of their pension from the first job. Currently, the Comptroller's office can't check with local governments to find out if anyone is double dipping. The bill would permit the state's tax department and comptroller's office to share information, so that any worker who reaches the limit would have to give the money back.
Voters in school districts across the state gave the thumbs up to 95 percent of the school budgets up for approval yesterday. That's a very high rate for any year, particularly one in which the budgets included many school closures and other steep cuts bound to appease taxpayers but tick off parents.
The Buffalo News points out that in many cases the budgets that did pass are so slimmed down they look almost identical to what goes forward if they don't pass at all.
For many districts, additional cuts in state aid this year were almost too much to handle. Some, like Cheektowaga-Sloan, presented a budget that is nearly a contingent budget, and included a tax increase of more than 10 percent. It was approved by 48 votes.
School budgets are closely tied to property taxes.
And, what do you know, New York business groups converged on Albany yesterday to lobby for that 2 percent property tax cap.
