Months of bad decisions and inaction by New York state officials have put school districts in the awkward position of having to give pay raises to most teachers while laying off others. Read More
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If New York was a country in 2016—the most recent year for global education spending data—it would have boasted the highest per pupil expenditure in the world, even after subtracting 20 percent of state aid. Read More
The result is that a major public health disaster affecting New York's nursing home residents is not being accurately documented by either of the agencies responsible for protecting them – because state officials are refusing to share the true numbers, and federal officials haven't yet asked for them. Read More
Federal income taxes paid by New Yorkers decreased by nearly $3.4 billion in 2018, the first year of the new federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), according to newly released Internal Revenue Service data. Read More
The state Health Department is offering a new explanation for why it won’t provide the full death toll of coronavirus in nursing homes: it can’t find the records. Read More
The U.S. Justice Department's newly announced inquiry into coronavirus in New York's nursing homes comes with a crucial caveat: It will look only at government-operated facilities, which represent a small fraction of the state's nursing-home industry. Read More
New York's per-recipient Medicaid spending has soared to the nation's third highest rate, a sign of fiscal trouble for one of the state's most important programs. Read More
Despite a round of cost-cutting this spring, New York's Medicaid spending is on track to jump by 6 percent this year thanks to a massive influx of federal aid. Read More
As the economy continued its slow post-pandemic reopening, New York State continued to slowly regain jobs—but preliminary data indicate there was no improvement in the state's unemployment rate in July. Read More
Governor Cuomo has ordered local governments to “reinvent” their police departments or risk losing state and federal funding, but the back-up guidance from Cuomo's office sets up an arduous process that likely will conflict with other parts of state law. To put it plainly, the guidance shows the state’s “New York Tough” governor won’t take on its police unions. Read More
Governor Cuomo continues to burn while pols in Washington fiddle around the issue of providing more aid to states and localities in yet another federal stimulus bill. Meanwhile, New York State's plummeting revenues still haven't hit their post-pandemic bottom, according to the First Quarterly Update to the state's FY 2021 Financial Plan. Read More
New York City's five municipal public pension funds ended their 2020 fiscal year with a net investment gain of 4.44 percent, well below their 7 percent assumed rate of return. That shortfall, reflecting the pandemic recession and its impact on financial markets, is expected to drive up the city's annual tax-funded pension costs by up to $200 million within the next three years. Read More