Blog

Last week's New York state budget approval process was even more rushed, secretive, confused and sloppy than usual—stretching through Good Friday and the first night of Passover into the predawn hours of Saturday, March 31—all in the name of meeting an ultimately inconsequential April 1 "deadline" for the start of the new fiscal year. Read More

The largest revenue-raiser in the just-completed state budget, worth $2 billion over four years, is not a tax or a fee or even a legal settlement. It takes the form of semi-voluntary “grants,” mostly to be squeezed out of a Catholic Church-affiliated health plan. Read More

Buried in the state budget bills rushing towards passage under cover of Passover, Good Friday evening and the coming Easter holiday is the top item on the New York government unions’ wish list—a provision designed to trap public employees into paying union dues. Read More

New York's Legislature and Governor Andrew Cuomo are shoveling yet another $475 million into the biggest, murkiest, pork-barrel slush fund Albany (and perhaps any state capital) has ever seen. Read More

Governor Cuomo’s proposal to expropriate “excess” reserves from Medicaid managed care plans would apparently target just two insurers—Fidelis Care and MetroPlus—even though their reserve levels are not unusually high. Read More

As Albany lawmakers consider imposing costly new taxes and mandates on health insurance, a report from the New York State Health Foundation offers a timely reminder: The state’s insurance premiums are already among the highest in the country, and rising fast. Read More

For a second consecutive year, the state Assembly is poised to pass a union-backed bill that would make it harder for New York government employees to opt out of union membership. This time, at least, it may be debated first. Read More

The state Senate’s ruling majority coalition hopes state budget talks will include a “discussion about whether the definition of public work should be updated”—shorthand for whether costly union compensation packages should be imposed on a much larger number of projects subsidized directly or indirectly by taxpayers. Read More

Governor Andrew Cuomo has married his unrealistic renewable energy targets to his push to steer work to the building trades unions. The likely results: even higher costs—and even fewer projects. Read More