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There are a few political articles of note in this week’s Crain’s:
Analysts say that selling the much-criticized Long Island Power Authority to a private company would require the state to assume at least $4 billion in debt. Aaron Elstein reports:
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said this month in his State of the State address that he wanted to “abolish” LIPA. “It has never worked,” he said. “It never will.” But analysts believe that persuading a private company to buy the much-maligned utility would require the state to assume at least $4 billion of LIPA’s $7 billion in debt. A sale would then trigger nearly $1 billion in additional costs: early-termination fees paid to bondholders, as well as penalties for the derivatives contracts that would suddenly become void, according to people who have studied a privatization.
Campaign finance reports filed by both the Democratic and Republican candidates for New York City mayor have helped clarify the state of the 2013 field. Andrew J. Hawkins and Chris Bragg report:
Over the past three years, the four Democrats have raised a total of $15.3 million and spent $3.6 million. Those are fair sums, but New Yorkers won’t experience the kind of advertising blitz they have grown accustomed to from Mayor Michael Bloomberg. If the leading Democrats all spent as much as the matching-funds program allows in the primary, the total would be a third of what Mr. Bloomberg spent on each of his three election victories.
And Crain’s columnist Greg David writes about the implications of shrinking Wall Street bonuses for the state:
The great unknown is where we are headed. If Wall Street shrinks to the size and profitability of 1996, just before the Internet boom really took off, the state revenue it provides will fall by more than half, to $4 billion annually. The city’s take will fall by two-thirds.
