LoHud.com is providing access to a database that will show how much tax-payer money is being spent on travel and other per-diem expenses.

For example:Assemblyman J. Gary Pretlow, D-Mount Vernon, has spent $182,559 in per-diem and travel expenses over the last decade, which is the highest amount among the members of the Lower Hudson Valley state delegation. In the state senate, Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson, D-Mount Vernon, led the local delegation with $154,267 in travel and per-diem expenses.

To see how much money your local legislator has spent click here.

Laura Nahmias writes on NYCapitolNews.com - “Senate Democrats may have avoided the albatross of the latest budget ever going into the fall elections, but they are still being attacked for this year’s piecemeal budget, hostile negotiations and uncertain revenue.

Elizabeth Lynam, deputy research director at the independent, non-partisan Citizens Budget Commission, criticized the budget for doing too little to address rising labor costs, which were left virtually untouched, and failing to tackle Medicaid and school aid, both programs badly in need of reform.

Revenue generators like a soda tax and a tax on income earned by out-of-state hedge fund employees, panned by the beverage lobby and some business interest groups, were left out of the budget in favor of higher sales taxes on cigarettes and elimination of a tax exemption on clothing and shoes costing less than $110.

The tax increases are “shameful,” said Heather Briccetti, vice president of governmental affairs for the Business Council of New York State.

The Council’s leadership, which represents over 3,000 employers in the state, was appalled at tax-credit deferrals and tax increases, she said.

“The state is going back on its word to not increase spending,” said Briccetti, adding that new measures seemed “blind” to the poor state of the economy and could hurt job growth.

The Business Council has never endorsed candidates in an election before, but Briccetti said members were weighing whether to come out in favor of candidates this year in response to mounting frustrations.

“There are a lot of really negative things in this budget,” and the difficult climate for businesses could force an endorsement, she said.”

To read more click here.

To send a message to Albany telling them that you have had Enough Alreadyclick here.

New York state employers responding to a Business Council survey have once again overwhelmingly identified employee health care as their top cost-of-doing-business concern. The new survey also showed strong employer concern about business taxes and economic development incentives.

To read more about how Business Council member firms ranked various public-policy issues within each of two areas: cost-of-doing business and economic development click here.

By a nearly three-to-one margin, voters believe the recently enacted state budget will worsen, not improve, the state’s long term fiscal condition. While only 15 percent believe the budget will improve the state’s fiscal condition, 41 percent believe it will worsen it, and an additional 32 percent believe it will have no effect,” Greenberg said. “Voters continue to be pessimistic about the fiscal condition of New York, which is reflected in the fact that two-thirds of voters believe the state is headed in the wrong direction and only 21 percent believe the state is on the right track, according to a poll released today by Siena College.

To read more click here.

According the Governor’s Office, he has acted on 137 bills, including issuing 34 vetoes. Of those, 24 include either unfunded mandates to State agencies and local governments, unfunded grants, an unfunded mandate to energy providers that would be passed on to ratepayers, and a pension sweetener. For those bills that had specific cost estimates, the total amount of increased and unfunded spending was $22.9 million. Additionally, many of the bills that impose substantial cost have technical faults, lack a clear objective or will be difficult to implement, making it impossible to estimate savings.

To read more click here.

In a recent editorial in the Times Herald-Record Ken Hall writes - “Next time I take a week off from writing editorials, I might recruit Marcus Molinaro, former mayor of Tivoli, member of the GOP Assembly road show team and master of a good political vocabulary.

I complimented him on his use of some editorial favorites to describe the state Legislature, words such as “lazy” and “gluttonous.”

Don’t forget “bloated,” he said.

Add a few active verbs and he could be on his way to a new profession. Not that he wants one. He wants to stay in Albany and clean it up. He candidly admits that there are those among his colleagues who say the same things but don’t really mean them.

So he and others in the longest-suffering minority party caucus in the nation are on a crusade to change the way the Legislature works.

In the past, similar efforts would have met with cynicism. Sure, they want to change the rules whey they are out of power; let them run things and they’ll be just as bad. That’s what happened when power shifted to the Democrats in the Senate, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen in the Assembly…

A new governor will make a difference. That new governor, however, will find, as Eliot Spitzer did, that changing Albany comes down to one thing.

It all starts with getting rid of Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Assembly, said Molinaro and Assemblyman Steve Hawley during a visit this week. There is no doubt that Silver will win re-election this fall and little question that he will win the secret vote among Assembly Democrats, emerging in the first weeks of January to take his customary place at the center of everything.”

To read the rest of the editorial click here.

Tom Precious of the Buffalo News reports - “It turns out New York’s state budget was not really completed when everyone thought it was.

And red-faced officials rushed Wednesday to avoid shattering the all-time latest state budget record for passage and signing into law of a state fiscal plan.

Blame it all on a mix-up that began Aug. 3, which led to Gov. David Paterson the next day signing what he thought was the final component of the 2010 budget.

One problem: It was the wrong bill.”

To read more click here.

State Senator George Winner writes on nysenate.gov about how the budget will drive jobs and businesses out of New York.

“The just-completed 2010-2011 New York State budget puts a few finishing touches on what has become a disturbing and disheartening habit of New York government in the past few years: devaluing not just a strong, but in these toughest of times what should be an unshakable commitment to economic development.

In fact, state leaders have been taking actions that serve better to drive jobs away than create them – and it simply can’t go on. The glaring example of this lack of a strong commitment to businesses, industries, and overall economic growth took place a few months ago as state leaders approached the final week before the scheduled termination, on June 30th, of what had been upstate New York’s No. 1 economic development tool – the Empire Zone program – and still, despite loud pledges to do otherwise, hadn’t enacted anything to replace it…

Not long ago state leaders put the finishing touches on this year’s state budget and one of their last actions was to approve financing legislation that includes a three-year deferral of tax credits that businesses throughout our region and across New York have already earned and were counting on to create and retain jobs in New York. This action amounts to a $2-billion business tax increase over the next three years.

Here’s how Ken Adams, president of the Business Council of New York State, responded, “Beyond several anti-business measures built into the 2011 budget, the two worst decisions for the long-term economic health of New York involve the state violating commitments it made to firms that have been playing by the rules and investing here.

“First, a three-year deferral of already earned tax credits. Many companies have made significant investments to create and retain jobs in New York…Part of their calculation in making those investments included tax credits to offset the high cost of doing business here. Now the state says, ‘Hold on, you can’t get your credits until 2013.’

“Companies will see their taxes increase by more than $2 billion during the next three years. Many are skeptical that the state will be in a position to make things right when the deferral period is over.”

And then Mr. Adams makes his most damaging point: “Understandably, these companies – many of which financed their projects based on the timely payment by the state of the credits they earned – will have grave doubts about entering into more economic development agreements with New York. Firms considering moving to New York see us as the state that can’t keep its word.”

To read more click here.

In a New York Post op-ed Dick Morris and Eileen McGann make a case for New York and other states with mounting deficits to take steps that will allow them to reduce the high cost of pensions to public employees and why the one-time pay off of $26 Billion from Washington is a bad idea.

“Federal Band-Aids won’t cover the fiscal problems of such states as New York, California, Michigan and Connecticut forever. State bankruptcy and fundamental restructuring of state and local finance — and labor relations — is at hand.

Take Connecticut. In the current fiscal year, $2 billion in federal subsidies have helped tide it over the recession — a hefty share of its $15 billion budget. But these infusions are one-shot grants, renewed only if Congress acts affirmatively to do so. Other states depend on similar manifestations of federal largess.

In Washington, the House is set to pass a $26 billion aid package this week — fresh federal aid amounting to about 2 percent of state and local spending. But if the Republicans win control of Congress this fall, it is hard to see any legislative willingness to renew these subsidies.

Instead, GOP lawmakers will point to the examples of New Jersey, Virginia and Indiana — where conservative governors have slashed spending to avoid tax hikes. In Virginia, Gov. Bob McDonnell has reduced spending to pre-2006 levels.”

To read more click here.

Joseph Spector writes in the Democrat and Chronicle that even with more than 6000 vetoes by the Governor millions in pork spending still handed out.

“Gov. David Paterson’s veto pen hasn’t ended spending for legislative earmarks, state records show.

In July, the state signed off on $12.5 million in member items for lawmakers’ hometown projects — including $438,000 for a senior center in Queens, $100,000 for a group opposed to a major power line in central New York and $7,500 for the Rochester Crime Stoppers program.

In all, 609 member items were authorized by the state Comptroller’s Office last month, a review by Gannett’s Albany bureau found. An additional 57 projects totaling nearly $1 million were approved in just the first few days of August.”

To read more click here.