Blog

This year, for once, state lawmakers' failure to pass a timely budget could prove to be a stroke of luck. When President Trump rolled out his on April 2, Albany leaders had not agreed on a spending plan for Read More

New York's home health employment is continuing to soar, growing by 57,000 jobs or 10 percent from 2023 to 2024, according to newly released data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read More

Governor Hochul has further delayed what amounts to a tax on energy until after the next general election.  Almost six years after the state adopted an aggressive emissions-cu Read More

As Washington contemplates cutbacks to federal funding for Medicaid, officials in Albany have reacted in two self-contradictory ways. On one hand, they warn of Read More

New York for decades has collected, under various names, a special tax on mobile phones. The tax, which today shows up on customer bills as the “public safety communications surcharge,” devolved from being a fee to pay for 911 services to a general revenue source with 911 services as a near second thought. Since 2009, almost half the surcharges paid by customers for public safety communications—more than $1 billion—have been redirected to New York’s general fund. Read More

One of the biggest drivers of New York's Medicaid enrollment growth over the past decade has been "emergency Medicaid" for undocumented immigrants, newly released state records show. Read More

The Health Department has been either unable or unwilling to document the eligibility status of almost one million Medicaid recipients, raising further concern about the possibility of large-scale over-enrollment. Read More

Although Governor Hochul said last week that the current trajectory of Medicaid spending is "not sustainable," the upward trend is even steeper than she and her budget director have acknowledged. Read More

New York in 2022 told school districts they’d be barred from purchasing gasoline- or diesel-powered buses after 2027, and instead have to buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost. “The purchase of new electric buses will help grow the market,” officials later pledged, “which will in turn help reduce prices.” Unfortunately for taxpayers, those reductions aren’t materializing—because state officials put the prices, and future increases, on cruise control. Read More

Financing and regulating health care delivery is one of the biggest responsibilities of state government, yet Governor Hochul had remarkably little to say on that topic in her State of the State speech on Tuesday. Read More

Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York. Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More

Governor Hochul on Saturday signed an innocuous-sounding bill to “regulate the use of automated decision-making systems and artificial intelligence techniques by state agencies.” But the “Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government,” or LOADinG Act, wasn’t about protecting New York from self-aware computers trying to wipe out humanity. Instead, it was an early Christmas present for the state's public employee unions—and a lump of coal for New Yorkers hoping for more efficient state government. Read More