Immigrants have been very very good for NYC

NY Post

Immigrants love New York — they always have.
 
And they are having the greatest economic effect here, out of all the states, according to a new report.
The WalletHub study compared the economic impact of foreign-born populations on the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It used 23 indicators to determine which states benefit the most — and least — from immigration.
 
New York was No. 1 because “foreign-born population is almost 23 percent, second-highest in the country, and more than 12 percent of its households are made up of second-generation immigrants,” the report said, adding, “The percentage of income generated by immigrant households is over 25 percent, the highest in the nation.”
 
WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez attributed New York’s immigrant bounty to a number of factors.
 
“Some of the reasons immigrants have the highest economic impact in New York include the third-largest share of foreign-born workforce, over 27 percent, and the second-largest share of foreign-born business owners, over 25 percent,” she said. “The state also has the second-largest share of active physicians who are international medical graduates, 37 percent.”
 
In addition, New York has a large number of international students and enjoys the “brain gain” and innovation brought by immigrants.
 

Property taxes go up but salaries don't

From the NY Post:

The city’s property-tax rate has grown at triple the rate of New Yorkers’ incomes over the past decade, making it tough for residents at the lower end of the economic scale to make ends meet, Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office said Wednesday.

Property taxes are eating up ever larger portions of homeowners’ income — particularly for households making less than $50,000 a year, Stringer’s office found.

That group saw its average property-tax burden nearly double between 2005 and 2016, growing from 6.6 percent to 12.7 percent of income.

“Property taxes are rising too fast and incomes are rising too slow — and it’s becoming harder than ever for already struggling New Yorkers to get ahead,” said Stringer.

In 2005, homeowners making less than $50,000 paid an average property tax of $1,940. By 2016, they were shelling out $3,849 — while median salaries for the group stayed relatively flat at just under $33,000 per year.

Higher-earning families also had nothing to cheer about.

Those making between $50,000 and $100,000 annually devoted 3.4 percent of their earnings to property taxes in 2005 and 5.4 percent by 2016.

The tax burden on households in the $100,000- to $250,000-a-year bracket had less to complain about, with the portion of their paychecks that went to property taxes rising from 2.4 percent to 3.7 percent.

Owning a home in Queens is not cheap

From the Times Ledger:

Owning a home can be quite expensive in New York City.

A new analysis revealed that Queens ranked as the fourth highest county in New York where residents spent half of their income on housing costs.

Gavop, a real estate, housing, and local data analytics service, used data from the U.S. Census Bureau to produce a study on homeowners’ costs as a percentage of income, according to Kevin Pryor, Gavop analyst. It analyzed real estate trends at the county level across the United States and found that Queens County had a median income of $62,207 and a median housing cost of $29,136 per year for homeowners with a mortgage.

In the study, housing costs include homeowner expenses such as the sum of mortgage payments, real estate taxes, insurance, and utilities.

“We looked at annual housing costs as a percentage to gauge how much debt people owe to their living situation based on location,” said Pryor. “Here, the numbers show that Queens residents paid a high median percentage of income on housing costs, resulting in a large debt to homeownership in the area.”

Pryor said for Queens “it was abnormally high for New York.” The percentage was 46.8 percent, where residents spent half of their income on mortgage payments, including utilities and maintenance.

Queens County’s median housing cost in relation to income is much larger than New York state’s rate of 39.5 percent and the national level of 31 percent.

Vallone denounces outside income then introduces bill amendment to allow it

You may recall that during Paul Vallone's 2013 campaign, he stated that if elected, he would close his law practice and focus on being a full time legislator. Well, he did close the eastern branch of Vallone and Vallone, but he soon got busted by the media and by your humble blogger for not exactly being out of the lawyer/lobbyist business.

Yesterday, it was revealed that Vallone plans to introduce an amendment to the salary bill that is to be voted on today, which would allow council members to keep their outside income.

Will the real Paul Vallone please stand up?

At these prices, can anyone afford Queens anymore?

From Brick Underground:

Wondering how much you need to make to live — and rent — in your favorite borough? We're here to help. The data below is based on the March 2015 rental market reports for Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens, which were recently released.

Assuming that landlords require you to have 40 times the monthly rent (or you get a guarantor who makes 80 times or hire one), here's what your salary (or yours and any roommates/partners combined) will have to be, according to the new numbers.

QUEENS:
To live in a studio, you'll have to make $98,720. (Median: $2,468)
​To live in a one-bedroom, you'll have to make $118,280. (Median: $2,957)
To live in a two-bedroom, you'll have to make $151,600. (Median: $3,790)
To live in a three-plus-bedroom, you'll have to make $220,000. (Median: $5,5,00)

Silver failed to disclose all his income

From the Daily News:

Already facing federal corruption charges, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver is now being fined for violating state ethics laws for not properly disclosing all his outside income.

The Joint Commission on Public Ethics — the state’s top ethics watchdog agency —notified Silver that he faces up to $120,000 in fines for filing inadequate financial disclosure statements in 2011, 2012 and 2013.

Business owner underreported income

From the Daily News:

The owner of an Edible Arrangements store in Queens has admitted to gorging himself on tax money, prosecutors said Thursday.

Maurice Letman, 42, of Springfield Gardens, pleaded guilty to lining his pockets with $185,000 forbidden fruit — money that should have gone to the city and state.

“Sales taxes are meant for the public treasury — not to line the pockets of businessmen,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

Letman has agreed to repay the full $185,000 plus interest and penalties.

He was charged last year with underreporting income from his Springfield Blvd. franchise of the popular fruit basket chain.

We can dream, can't we?

From the Daily News:

The hammering of New York’s working and middle classes is reaching emergency proportions.

While the state and city economies are modestly creating jobs, paychecks are stagnating or worse — with all too many New Yorkers facing a diminished standard of living for themselves and their children.

A Wall Street Journal analysis found that average incomes declined over the past decade in wide swaths of the United States — including in the heart of working New York City.

In Brooklyn, the average annual paycheck, when adjusted for inflation, stood at $43,724 in 2004. By 2013, it had shriveled to just $39,959 — a devastating 8.6% drop.

In Queens, the inflation-adjusted average lost 5.7% over those 10 years, falling from $49,050 to $46,238. In Staten Island, the average shrank 5.1%, from $44,189 to $41,917.

Huge forces are at work. Among them are the loss of manufacturing jobs due to globalization and automation, health-care costs that take an ever-bigger bite out of employers’ budgets and the concentration of job growth in low-paying sectors like retail and home health care.

The only solution: robust economic growth.

What’s called for is an aggressive push to roll back the high taxes and onerous regulations that make New York one of the least business-friendly states in the country.

To invest in roads, mass transit and other infrastructure that would create jobs while catalyzing future growth.

To demand far better performance from schools — so they send out graduates prepared for college and careers, especially in science, technology, engineering and math.

And more — much, much more.

Is Flake hiding his income?

From the NY Post:

Did the Rev. Floyd Flake take a vow of poverty, or is he hiding his income?

The head of the Greater Allen Cathedral, one of the nation’s largest churches, reported earning nothing from the Queens house of worship on a recent tax filing.

It was the second year that tax filings from Flake’s nonprofit Empowerment Ministries disclosed no salary for him from the Jamaica church, where he is senior pastor.

His wife, Elaine, co-pastor of the church and vice president of the nonprofit, also showed no church income on the 2012 and 2011 filings.

But in 2010, the church paid Flake $252,719 in salary and benefits and his wife’s compensation came to $250,455, according to Empowerment Ministries’ tax filings for that year.

Flake, a former congressman, is president of Empowerment Ministries.

He signed the 2012 tax return for the group. Elaine did so for 2011.

He and Elaine were each paid $5,000 for their work at the charity in 2012.

Even though it is linked to a church, Empowerment Ministries is obligated to report the Flakes’ salaries, tax experts say.

Michael Chitwood, the group’s accountant, said he was waiting to see the church’s delayed 2012 financial statements and would amend the group’s return if necessary.

Legislators desperately trying to hide sources of income

From the NY Times:

New York, like many other states, has a part-time Legislature; the 212 members get a base salary of $79,500, plus leadership bonuses and expenses. Now the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption, created by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and staffed with top-flight lawyers and prosecutors, has started asking about the private business deals lawmakers have kept hidden for decades.

Even where state law requires some minimal disclosure, legislators have made it hard to find the details. To take just one obstacle, lawmakers fill out disclosure forms by hand; when the form was posted on the Internet this summer, it took two public interest groups, Common Cause/NY and New York Public Interest Research Group; a newspaper, The New York World at Columbia University; and two interns working for two weeks to make sense of it all.

What they found merely whets the appetite for even greater disclosure. The Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, made up to $920,000 for his work with a law firm and his investments; the Senate Republican leader, Dean Skelos, earned as much as $263,000 in legal work, investments and deferred compensation. All told, 115 of the 212 legislators earned income on the side.

Crucially, however, these raw numbers do not show in detail where that money comes from, and thus where the conflicts of interest may lie. Is this legal client pushing a particular piece of legislation? Is that insurance company seeking a tax exemption?

State pols make a mint

From the Daily News:

State lawmakers draw a $79,500 salary from taxpayers for their part-time legislator jobs — but for most of them, that’s just chump change.

A new study shows that members of the state Assembly and Senate took home between $178,140 and $237,941 in 2012 on average, thanks to outside income from investments and jobs with law firms and other businesses.

“Being a state legislator is considered a part-time job and, clearly, a lot of them treat it as such,” said Bill Mahoney of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which released the study with Common Cause/NY on Tuesday.

Lawmakers on average earned far more than the state’s median household income, which was $56,951 last year.

And some earned stratospheric salaries with 20 legislators recording total assets worth $1 million or more.

The revelations about lawmakers’ wealth are available thanks to new ethics disclosures that for the first time required all elected officials to report details regarding their outside incomes. The lawmakers disclosed income ranges, not specific details.