State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos says he is optimistic that despite the difficult choices they face, this is the year when Albany lawmakers will finally make the structural changes to the state budget needed to rein in spending. more

I have to admit, I’m having a problem understanding how, in just 33 working days, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team was able to recommend 79 cost cutting measures to save $2.3 billion in the upcoming budget. I’ll address this concern from three viewpoints. 
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My last column, “Stop playing games with the budget deficit” (Feb. 3) was written one week before New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli issued his analysis of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s executive budget draft. The irrationality I outlined fell short of anticipating the following mea-culpa expressed in the comptroller’s analysis. “The SFY 2010-2011 enacted budget relied on $16.7 billion in non-recurring or temporary budget resources; and overly optimistic tax revenue projections, causing a dramatically worsened state structural deficit.” How dramatic? These tenuous entries constituted 30 percent of all the monies in the state’s operating fund. more

Though the Lawrence School District anticipates losing $2.2 million in combined state and federal aid next year, it still plans to expand its educational offerings by realizing an equal amount in savings through cuts to the Civil Service support staff, administration and two programs. more

The Hewlett-Woodmere School District is drafting its 2011-12 budget in preparation for the May 17 school budget vote. more

With the inauguration of Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Saturday, New York state officially ended its brief but disastrous Spitzer era. Eliot Spitzer, the former attorney general, was elected governor in 2006 in a landslide and then entered office not to make friends in Albany, not even to govern, but to rule the land. He crashed and burned in one of the country’s most notorious sex scandals, after which he resigned and Lt. Gov. David Paterson assumed the state’s reins. more

For the third time in seven months, the Lawrence School District plans to lay off staff. Twenty-seven hall monitors, clerical and grounds crew employees were notified on Dec. 6 that their positions could be eliminated as early as Dec. 31 as a cost-saving measure, pending Board of Education and Nassau County Civil Service Commission approval. more

For some unexplained reason, success in politics is measured by what happens in the first 100 days of a politician’s time in office. For Gov.-elect Andrew Cuomo, his success or progress will be held to the same standard, however unrealistic it may be. more

During his campaign, Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo’s transition team released a detailed and well-annotated report outlining plans for “Rightsizing Government.” The report’s findings and recommendations reiterate much of what the previous columns in this series have suggested: that New York state’s Public Authorities and agencies have “become too big, too expensive, and too ineffective — an ever proliferating tangle of boards, commissions, councils, departments, divisions, offices, task forces and public authorities, [that] the taxpaying public can no longer afford.“ Amen. more

The David S. Mack Sports and Exhibition Complex at Hofstra University was the site for the first gubernatorial debate of the 2010 election.Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Carl Paladino were … more