Voters can end company’s political clout
Here’s a question for voters in Albany County. Does it bother you that one company has extraordinary influence over county politics? I ask the question after reading two stories from Wednesday’s Times...
View ArticleState’s sword dangles over homeowners
Sunday’s column detailed the state-induced ordeal experienced by homeowners in Stuyvesant. At its essence, this is a story about the callousness, and arrogance, of the state’s Department of...
View ArticleSunday column: Need a license? In New York, there’s a rub
HALFMOON — New York or Rhode Island. Eric and Loren Renaud, newly married, had a choice. They chose New York. On the surface, the decision made sense. Eric Renaud could work in either state, while...
View ArticleGreat reader comment: Massage therapy deserves more respect
I get some great, really thoughtful reader comments on this blog. Unfortunately, they get buried a bit — so this is my attempt to give them a wider audience. The comment below is from ‘Lexie’ and was...
View ArticleColumn: Thruway overtime offers road of gold
Gerald Flint is the Thruway’s king of overtime. Flint, a toll collector at the Albany Northway plaza, received $49,000 in overtime pay last year, pushing his overall salary to just over $100,000....
View ArticleState tax dollars boosted the Bushmaster factory. So … do you have a problem...
So, Sunday’s Advocate column — read it here — is was about the nearly $6 million that the state’s economic development agency has provided to the Herkimer County factory that now produces the...
View ArticleColumn: Let’s put public corruption on display
Today’s column is about Bruce Roter’s proposal for a Museum of Political Corruption in Albany. It sounds like a joke, I know, but Roter insists he’s serious. And you know what? I think he’s on to...
View ArticleColumn: There could have been a Whole Foods — in Albany
My Sunday column was about the stalled redevelopment of the Harriman State Office Campus, and the missed opportunity that represents for the city of Albany. I looked back at a the rejected plan...
View ArticleWhen low voter turnout is not a surprise
Here’s the start of my column from Sunday’s newspaper, which is about the Guilderland school district’s outrageous decision to schedule a spending referendum just nine days after the general election:...
View ArticleYou get tax increases. Dan McCoy gets chrome wheels, leather seats and all...
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy has proposed an 8.9 percent tax increase — the fifth tax hike for county residents in five years. McCoy has suggested that he has no choice to raise taxes so much,...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....