On Wednesday, April 7th, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation Fred Siegel visited the Young Leaders Circle to dissect the severe fiscal and political crises that have plagued New York State in recent years. Unsustainable government spending—with public sector union strangleholds and corrupt elected officials sharing much of the blame—has devastated the budget, swelled tax rates and unemployment, and forced the mass migration of residents elsewhere. He argued that only pressure from the financial markets and a major overhaul of the legislative bodies could improve this grim picture.

Mr. Siegel was one of the major intellectual forces in the revitalization of American cities in the 1990s. As a senior adviser to Rudolph Giuliani's 1993 mayoral campaign, he wrote one of Mr. Giuliani's path-breaking speeches on quality of life. He was also one of the original editors of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.

Suggested Reading:
Rotten, City Journal, Spring 2010
Albany's Crime Spree, The Weekly Standard, March 22, 2010
The New Tammany Hall, The Weekly Standard , October 12, 2009
France on the Hudson, The Weekly Standard, November 16, 2009 

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