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Amanda’s Law
Carbon monoxide alarm requirements to go into effect February 22, 2010

As the result of legislation, Amanda’s Law will go into effect on February 22, 2010. It requires essentially all residences, both new and existing, to have carbon monoxide alarms installed. They will be required to have at least one carbon monoxide alarm installed on the lowest story having a sleeping area for each living unit.

For more information go to the following website.

http://www.dos.state.ny.us/code/COAlarm.htm

Carbon monoxide detectors ten years or older should be replaced with new ones to protect you from dangerous carbon monoxide levels.

Governor David Paterson recently proposed an Executive Budget for 2010-2011 that includes a spending cap to control state spending. Tied into the cap is a property tax circuit breaker that would provide property tax refunds to New York's working families. The cap puts New York State on a path to economic recovery that will lead to future budget surpluses -- which will then be returned to taxpayers through property tax relief.

Under the 2010-2011 Executive Budget, the spending cap would require sufficient spending cuts to generate a more than $1 billion surplus in the 2011-12 fiscal year. This will be returned to tax payers through a circuit-breaker tax credit that will result billions of dollars in property tax relief.  

The circuit-breaker benefit will be calculated by limiting the property tax burden to a specified percentage of a tax payer's income. That percentage would decrease based on the size of the State’s surplus. And as New York’s fiscal condition improves, the circuit-breaker program could provide tax payers with an increasingly larger benefit, since they would pay an increasingly smaller percentage of their income in property taxes.

"The amount of recipients and the average value of the benefit would increase based on the size of the State’s budget surplus. At the close of each fiscal year, the NYS Department of Taxation and Finance would calculate the benefit after the Division of the Budget has certified the size of the surplus and directed a portion to the Rainy Day Fund. Average projected benefits are included below:"

source:http://www.cc.ny.gov/view.cfm?view=7BEEFF3E-5056-9D0B-1A88294EB2803E4C_8690D701-C293-B74F-A79B237D5135AF7A