Carl Paladino is sleeping. Out in the eastern tip of Long Island, traffic is at a standstill. It is an overcast, humid, mid-August afternoon, and while Paladino catches some Z’s in the back seat of a tan Ford SUV, his campaign aides John Haggerty and Michael Caputo sit in the front, engaged in the time-honored political tradition of talking smack about the ...
Read more »The state’s teachers union is hopping mad at the Legislature. So mad, they plan on sitting out several key races this year. The combination of charter schools, teacher layoffs, tweaking union contracts to appease the federal Race to the Top gatekeepers, and capping property taxes—which many believe will hurt local schools—is proving to be a toxic cocktail for ...
Read more »Sorry, Connecticut. The move to raise taxes on those hedge fund managers who work in New York but live out of state died a quiet death in early August, much to the joy of Wall Street and the chagrin of the Nutmeg State officials hoping to poach some of those businesses. But there is still a lot at stake for Wall Street and the insurance industry in this year’s state ...
Read more »Steve Levy still cannot believe he is being left out of the 2010 elections. Even after the public rebuke of the Republican Convention in May, when he fell short of the number of votes needed to be allowed onto the primary against Rick Lazio for the GOP line, he stands by his decision to his switch parties, still batting back criticism that he would have fared better had he run ...
Read more »The debate over taxes on Indian tobacco products has sparked a larger fight between the Legislature and the governor over the expansion of executive power. On July 21, Gov. David Paterson vetoed a chapter amendment submitted by the Legislature that would require all cigarettes sold to Indian nations to bear a tax stamp. The measure also would have reversed the governor’s ...
Read more »At a recent forum on education policy in the Bloomberg era, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch wasted no words lambasting the state’s “flawed” testing and vowing a huge paradigm shift in how the exams are administered to students across the state.But not everyone in the audience was wowed by all the talk of paradigm-shifting. “What happens is they ...
Read more »When Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb took over from Jim Tedisco over a year ago, he said his goal was to run competitively in all 102 districts held by Democrats. And if he was ever going to pull it off, this would be the year to do it. Voter anger at incumbents is at an all-time high, especially toward Democrats, who control all three braches of government. Republicans ...
Read more »Of approximately 70 public schools in Buffalo, 17 are charter schools, per capita more than any other city in the state. Around$71 million in public funds are transferred to those schools each year, a figure that has the local teachers’ union up in arms. The union chief is arguing that millions are being siphoned away from public schools to benefit just a fraction of ...
Read more »Tea Party supporters across the country were thrilled by Rand Paul’s crushing victory in the Kentucky Senate Republican primary in late May. And none more so than Carl Paladino, the Buffalo businessman running an outsider campaign for governor this year. Paladino got off to a stuttering start, though, having to answer for a number of racist e-mails he had forwarded, and ...
Read more »Luke Martland, a former Albany assistant district attorney, is running hard in his long-shot primary campaign against State Sen. Neil Breslin.But for all the controversial issues being debated by the state, Martland’s argument has much less to do with Breslin’s voting record than with the six-term senator’s work as an estate and tort lawyer at the law firm ...
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Paladino’s Way
Progress In Reservation Tobacco Tax Fight May Go Up In Smoke Again
Despite Political Atmosphere, Even Modest Gain Remains Big Push For Assembly GOP
Post-Bruno, Outside Income Becomes Hot-Button Issue In Senate Campaigns
