Governor Paterson must have a thing for the hard sell. For over a year he's fought with legislators over spending cuts as he tries to tackle the state's financial mess. Now he's taking on ethics reform, including a system to publicly finance...

Members of the state Assembly and Senate have offered an ethics and election law reform package, but it's not as far reaching as the package offered up by Governor Paterson during his State of the State address last week.
The Assembly package...

Only hours after Haiti was struck by a 7.0 earthquake, leaving thousands dead, injured, and homeless, the Rev. Pat Robertson told his followers that the Haitian people invoked the disaster on themselves.
The conservative Christian Right leader...

During his budget address this morning, Governor David Paterson laid out a proposal to cut the state's Environmental Protection Fund by $79 million and to impose a moratorium on land acquisition.
Details were in short supply, but the proposal...

Governor David Paterson is calling his plan to close a $7.4-billion budget gap in 2010-11 a "recovery budget."
The $134 billion proposal, he said during a speech this morning, increases overall spending by less than 1 percent, and includes but...

Republicans around the country are celebrating this morning. So are the Tea Partiers. So, I assume, is Joe Lieberman.
But Republican Scott Brown's capturing of Ted Kennedy's Senate seat has left me sad. And really worried.
Getting a health-care...

More than 250 people from about a dozen different parent, activist, and labor groups gathered outside City Hall last night to protest Mayor Bob Duffy's plans for taking control of the city school district.
In addition to members of the...

It turns out that the state will still pursue the purchase of the Hemlock Lake and Canadice Lakes watersheds this year.
Yesterday, I wondered in a blog post whether the governor's proposal for a moratorium on state land acquisition via the...

The analyzing of Tuesday's victory for Massachusetts's new Republican Senator Scott Brown is in full swing.
The Democrats disarray is like an open-casket viewing.
We have White House spokesman Robert Gibbs trying to explain the president's...

A.M. thoughts from our news staff:
Tuesday's Massachusetts election outcome was depressing, but not catastrophic. Yesterday's Supreme Court decision letting corporations help finance political campaigns was something else...

Susan John's Assembly district is, again, serving as an example of the lunacy that is redistricting in New York.
Now that John's said she won't seek re-election, a number of possible candidates are getting mention and they seem to come from...

Just about every reporter in town scrambled to get a peek at Mayor Bob Duffy's report on mayoral control.
From most accounts, the 10-page document, "Putting Children First," is more of a continuation of what Duffy thinks should be done, rather...

President Obama plans to announce tomorrow the recipients of $8 billion in federal funding for high-speed rail. And it sounds like New York will be getting a chunk of that money.
Congress member...

President Obama, in his first State of the Union address, faced the challenge of reassuring a frightened middle class.The Obama that was carried to victory by so much hope and optimism has become an ordinary guy facing the country's...

Congress member Louise Slaughter briefed the local media corps today on some details of the $151-million in high-speed rail funding that's coming to New York. Here's some of what we learned:

Slaughter's very happy with the amount New York...

Some members of City Council held a work session yesterday afternoon to discuss mayoral control.
The much-anticipated talking paper from Mayor Bob Duffy outlining his pitch for taking over city schools had just been released to the...

UR Professor David Hursh has written a blog on mayoral control. He has written previously on this topic and closely studied mayoral control of Chicago and NYC schools.
Hursh is an associate professor in the Warner School of Education at the...