New York feels your pain.

That was the message today from Gov. Paterson as he compared New York’s budget woes to California’s, which isn’t good news for either state, reports Gannett News Service correspondent Erin Kelly.

Both of the big states’ budgets are in a shambles, and they are effectively vying for the dubious title of worst [...]

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that the Cooperstown All Star Village in Oneonta has made its facility handicapped accessible, as he requested.

His investigation found that the park violated federal and state accessibility standards. As a result, the All-Star Village overhauled its facilities. The place is used for youth baseball tournaments throughout the summer.

Cuomo offered [...]

NYRA said that attendance was up 4.1 percent and on-track handle increased 4.5 percent at Saratoga Race Course in its fifth week this year compared to the fifth week of the 2007 meet.

While the numbers boosted a sluggish year at the Spa, it still trails 2007’s record-breaking business.

Attendance for the first 29 days of the [...]

So much for the bi-partisan spirit that permeated the Capitol last week.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, put out a statement today that tries to remind Gov. Paterson that it wasn’t Senate Republicans who stood in the way of further budget cuts last week.

Liz Benjamin reports that Paterson heaped praise on Assembly Speaker Sheldon [...]

Richard Iannuzzi, president of the New York State United Teachers, all but declared a school-property-tax cap dead today, saying the Assembly’s decision to support a circuit breaker plan thwarts the tax-cap idea.

The union has vehemently fought a tax cap, running ads (like the one below) and withholding endorsements of senators who voted in favor of [...]

The state Assembly worked until nearly 2 a.m. this morning to pass bills that will cut state spending by 6 percent. Lawmakers didn’t want to delay the vote until later today because many had campaign events to get back to tonight.

The state Senate, though, broke at around 10:30 p.m. last night and is scheduled to [...]

Manuel Rivera, former Rochester schools superintendent and deputy secretary for education in the Spitzer and Paterson administrations, has left his state job to move to the private sector, he said this morning.

Rivera said he is going to work for a private education company in Manhattan. He said an official announcement by the firm, which he [...]

In an attempt to strengthen its upstate infrastructure, the state GOP named Niagara County Chairman Henry Wojtaszek to be its upstate point person.

“Republicans have been the strongest advocates for upstate communities in terms of fighting for tax relief, economic development and a fair distribution of aid, and we are going to continue to build on [...]

Jonathan Smith, a Democrat who is challenging Assembly Republican incumbent Joel Miller, in the 102 District, which covers Poughkeepsie, received the endorsement today of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Kennedy, right, who heads the environmental group Waterkeeper Alliance, said he’s backing Smith because “he is running a campaign that focuses on creating jobs and reducing New York’s [...]

Gov. David Paterson today formed a Council of Economic Advisors to help him deal with the state’s budget woes.
He put some big names on the panel, including Robert Rubin and Roger Altman, former U.S. treasury secretaries, and Joseph Stiglitz, 2001 Nobel Prize Winner.

The 18-member panel met today behind closed doors. Also on the panel is [...]