Five weeks after unveiling its draft budget the Lawrence School District adopted its proposed budget at the Board of Education meeting on March 22. more

Five weeks after unveiling its draft budget the Lawrence School District adopted its proposed budget at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting. more

While the state mandated that all school district budget votes be on the same day in May, it never required school district to change the date of their public budget hearings. more

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. 
 more

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