Lots of waste going on in this town!

From NY1:

An audit released today accuses the Staten Island Yankees of owing the city more than $300,000 in ticket and advertising revenue.

The city comptroller's office charges that the team underreported attendance and miscounted no-show and complimentary tickets over a two-year period between November 2007 and October 2009.

The report also says the Yankees improperly deducted for the installation of the jumbotron.

The comptroller's office recommends the team develop a better system for tracking tickets and work with the city's Economic Development Corporation to better report advertising revenue. The EDC says they look forward to resolving the matter quickly.

From the NY Post:

New York City's government workers are freeloading on the taxpayers to the tune of nearly $1 billion a year by contributing little or nothing toward their health-insurance coverage, according to a bombshell study released yesterday.

The city's health-care giveaway -- amid the worst economic downturn in half a century -- is out of whack with even New York state government policy, according to the Rockefeller Institute of Government analysis.

State government workers and retirees must pay 10 percent of the cost of individual premiums and 25 percent of premiums for family health coverage.

If city workers were required to pay what state workers do, Big Apple taxpayers would realize $923 million in savings annually, the report said.

And other local governments around the state, combined, would save $838 million a year, if their workers shared in the cost of their health insurance.

Meanwhile, the researchers said cash-strapped Albany, which must close a projected $9 billion deficit next year, can no longer afford to subsidize escalating public-employee health costs.

The study recommends approval of a state law requiring that all local government workers -- teachers, firefighters and police -- contribute the same amount that state workers pay toward their health premiums.

From AMNY:

New York isn’t collecting on the majority of fines given to street vendors, according to a report by the city’s Independent Budget Office.

Of $15.8 million in fines handed to vendors in 2008 and 2009, a whopping $14.9 million was still outstanding as of Dec. 15, 2009, the report said.

In addition, the report noted that it cost about the city about $7.4 million to regulate vendors just for fiscal year 2009 and that a 1995 law aimed at improving sales tax collections from peddlers was never implemented.

From the NY Post:

A former housing official has agreed to pay a $20,000 fine for using government resources to run 17 Murray, a popular political hangout in the shadow of City Hall, it was disclosed yesterday.

Joseph Fischetti, the Housing Authority's former senior deputy director for infrastructure technology, admitted in a settlement with the Conflicts of Interest Board that after he bought a 50 percent stake in the 17 Murray restaurant in 2005, he devoted hours to the eatery on the city's time.