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From the
NY Post:
The city’s generous health-care benefits for municipal workers might qualify as costly “Cadillac plans” that get socked with significant financial penalties under ObamaCare, Mayor Bloomberg’s budget director warned yesterday.
Councilman Jimmy Oddo (R-SI) raised the potentially explosive possibility during a routine budget hearing.
“It would mean the city would get a 40 percent excise tax,” Oddo pointed out.
When he asked Budget Director Mark Page if that was a concern, he got a one-word reply: “Yes.”
Employers who spend more than $10,200 a year on health insurance for an individual employee or $27,500 for a family would start getting penalized in 2018. The tax is aimed at prodding employers to eliminate bloated medical-insurance costs.
From the
NY Post:
Hundreds of buildings seized by the city for unpaid taxes and turned over to low-income tenants and nonprofit groups decades ago are now in default, leaving taxpayers on the hook for $100 million, according to city officials.
"It's just a huge ongoing problem," Mark Page, the city's budget director, conceded at a City Council hearing last week.
He said the city is in a bind because it doesn't want the buildings back and hasn't had much luck collecting from poor tenants with limited assets.
"In theory, we could take the building because they haven't paid their taxes. But then what does that do for us?" he said. "It's full of tenants and then what do you do?"
From the
Daily News:
Mayor Bloomberg acknowledged Monday the $722 million CityTime system has "been a disaster" - but offered no plans to fix it.
He couldn't even say who was in charge of it.
The project to replace paper timesheets with hand scanners for city workers was supposed to cost $68 million when proposed in 1998, but is still only one-third finished.
"It's been a disaster. It is one of these massive computer projects that very seldom ever is successful," said Bloomberg, who made his fortune with financial data systems.
He made no suggestions on how to fix CityTime, and mistakenly told reporters Deputy Mayor Ed Skyler had been working on it for years.
"Ed's spent, it's an incalculable amount of time over the last few years looking at it, and you know, he's still trying to figure out," Bloomberg said, turning to Skyler. "You want to add anything to that?"
"No," the startled Skyler replied.
CityTime is managed by the Office of Payroll Administration, which is jointly controlled by the mayor and controller.
OPA Director Joel Bondy reports to Mark Page, Bloomberg's budget director.
From the NY Post:
