The good news for Gov. Paterson is that legislative leaders today didn’t dismiss out of his hand his proposal to establish a new independent ethics-watchdog panel that would also have authority over the Legislature.
“We are open to changes,’’ said Dean Weiller, a spokesman for Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan.
Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, D-Queens, said [...]

Memorial-Day-parade organizers can breathe a sigh of relief: Gov. David Paterson today signed a bill allowing people without commercial  licenses to drive fire trucks under special circumstances – like parades.

People without commercial licenses have been banned from driving police and fire vehicles  since a law was passed in 2005 to try to tighten [...]

With an expansion of the state’s nickel container-deposit law to water bottles slated to take effect in nine days,  state policy is still in flux, with four different bills being considered by the Legislature to change the measure that passed in April.

The biggest problem is that bottlers say they can’t meet a requirement that all [...]

Cornell University will get $27.5 million in federal and state money over five years to do research on materials for high-storage batteries and other energy-storage devices, state officials announced Thursday. “The funders recognized the strengths we have as an institution,’’ said Hector Abruna, director of the Cornell Fuel Cell Institute. Abruna said the money [...]

A state law passed last year to help reduce mortgage foreclosures has been mostly a failure, with only six settlements in Westchester, a state senator said today.

“Current anti-foreclosure efforts have not been very effective,’’ said Sen. jeff Klein, D-Bronx, who also represents Pelham and Eastchester as well as parts of Yonkers, New Rochelle and Mount  [...]

_ State tax revenues are likely to fall short of projections this year by $3 billion, meaning more cuts will have to be made in state spending, Gov. David Paterson said today. “There will be further cuts,’’ Paterson told reporters. “We’re going to have to start thinking about what more cuts there will be.’’ [...]

Happy 55th birthday, David Paterson.

The state’s first African American and first legally blind governor surely didn’t expect to be where he is today when he turned, say, 50 (when he was a state senator) or even 53  (when he was lieutenant governor). But by the time he turned 54, the New York political world was [...]

Voters in more than 97 percent of school districts approved their budgets yesterday, a record number, according to counts from the state School Boards Association and New York State United Teachers.

If that figure holds up, it would top the old record of 95 percent set two years ago.

“Even in tough economic times, we see that [...]

Just what the state needs: another dose of bad financial news.

Comptroller Tom DiNapoli reported today that tax collections last month were 44 precent less than a year earlier, and about $239 million below what Gov. Paterson projected last month.

“This was a poor start to the fiscal year,’’ DiNapoli said. “It’s been less than a month [...]

Two weeks ago, Gov. Paterson gave the four legislative leaders what sounded like a pretty simple assignment: give him a list of issues they wanted resolved before the end of the legislative session.

Maybe it wasn’t so simple. Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, so far is the only one of the four to comply.

Here’s his [...]