John W Rodat

Keeping Watch for Local Government Fiscal Stress

December 2, 2012 Accounting

New York’s Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli has issued a draft proposal for identifying local governments at risk of fiscal stress. An earlier report touches on local fiscal distress. And here, former Assemblyman Richard Brodsky discusses the earlier Comptroller’s report. It’s a good idea, and given the local governments that have already gotten themselves in trouble the […]

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Friday Afternoon Rant Supplement

November 30, 2012 CAFR

At the risk of prolonging the agony – for myself and readers of my most recent Friday afternoon rant, here are a couple of extras to further the point that counties charging cities, towns and villages, for Community College tuition is a political dodge, but likely one that will lead to even higher taxes. The […]

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Unfunded Mandate? A Bad Idea Unless We Should Do That Ourselves

November 30, 2012 Budget

Of late, I’ve been trying to avoid Albany County issues. But sometimes, you just can’t. We’re now looking at a backdoor property tax increase by Albany County – and even with that, the County would not be able to stay within the property tax cap. The latest is that a group of Democrats are withholding […]

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Consolidating the Gains in Health Coverage

November 7, 2012 Health Insurance

Across much of the political spectrum and even among some Republicans, I suspect that there will be at least one shared emotion: relief that a very long election campaign is over. One key implication is that there’s now no question that we will move ahead with implementation of the Affordable Care Act, “Obamacare.” There may […]

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Albany County: Working Hard to Make it Harder for the Public to Understand its Budget

November 3, 2012 Budget

The past several years, Albany County made its tentative (proposed) budget available online, not only in a readable format (PDF), but in a format (Excel) that the public and occasional legislators could actually do calculations with. No more. When the County Executive’s Tentative Budget was released last month, the PDF documents were posted online, but […]

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The Long – Post Sandy Disaster – Haul and Some Advice

November 3, 2012 Economics

Back in 2005, my wife and I suffered through a fire. We had just completed moving into a downtown Albany neighborhood, the new place was jammed with boxes, the furniture was randomly placed, and we were exhausted. So we took the weekend off to rest in New Hampshire. On our return, we discovered that our […]

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Political Moneyball and the End of Horserace Punditry?

November 2, 2012 Analysis

The past few days, there’s been a lot of chatter about the contrast between 538’s Nate Silver and subjective observers like Joe Scarborough and their respect electoral analyses. Some of it has gotten pretty ugly, especially about Silver. So Silver offered Scarborough a bet on Twitter. If Silver’s right and Obama wins, Scarborough gives $1,000 […]

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Post Sandy Volunteer?

October 31, 2012 Volunteer

Opportunities to volunteer in NYC: Call 311 NYC Service. Email nycservice@cityhall.nyc.gov with your name, email address, phone number and borough New York Cares. To sign up for orientation, click here.

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More on Political Moneyball

October 27, 2012 Data

John Cassidy of the New Yorker has a nice explanation of Nate Silver‘s statistical approach to forecasting elections and a balanced view of how much weight to give it. He contrasts that approach with that of David Brooks, New York Times columnist, who describes himself as a pollaholic, but who’s ultimately a skeptic. So here […]

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A “Moneyball” Moment in the Presidential Campaign

October 23, 2012 Analysis

With two weeks to go before the election, James Fallows notes the increasing difference between the perspective of the “old pros” who believe that Romney has the momentum that will lead him to defeat Obama and the poll and economics-driven number crunchers like Nate Silver whose current numbers suggest that Obama has the advantage. Fallows […]

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