It's a win for corporate welfare and a loss for Brooklyn: Panasonic has decided to move its headquarters—and its 950 jobs—from Secaucus, NJ to Newark, NJ, deciding against a Brooklyn property owned by Forest City Ratner. According to Crain's New York, "In the end, Brooklyn could not compete with a $102.4 million subsidy package offered to the consumer electronics giant to move to Newark." But it's not so cut-and-dry, because Panasonic's landlord in Secaucus and the town of Secaucus are suing! more ›

As the MTA looks for any possible source of revenue, it has made a bold suggestion: The agency wants city departments to pay tolls over MTA bridge and tunnel crossings. As WCBS 2 puts it, that includes "firefighters and police responding to emergencies or calls to service." Currently, those city departments are using about 11,000 free E-ZPass tags, so if the MTA gets its way, then the city would need to pay for the approximate 300,000 crossings each year. (The MTA also emphasizes it wouldn't stop responders heading to a scene.) A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg called it "an underhanded attempt to increase the city's already large subsidy of the MTA by charging the city for responding to emergencies or performing other essential services." Uh, the city's subsidy to the MTA hasn't really changed since 1990, according to the IBO. more ›