The tax cap effect was on full display in yesterday’s school budget voting. School budgets were approved at a record-high rate of 99.3 percent, adding to evidence that districts can live within a property tax cap set at either 2 percent or the prior year’s average rate of inflation, whichever is less. Read More
The House GOP is a model of cautious deliberation next to the Assembly’s handling of the New York Health Act, which would establish a statewide single-payer plan. Read More
The Cuomo administration has proposed modifications to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), which has long hindered growth and development in New York State. While the changes under consideration by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) would represent at least one important step in a pro-growth direction, the proposed tweaks to SEQR would also clear a smoother path for key Cuomo priorities, such as the development of vast solar panel farms and wind turbine installations required by the governor’s renewable energy push. And in some other respects, the proposed SEQR changes would create even more development red tape. Read More
What would happen to New York’s popular Essential Plan under the House Republican health bill? The answer, like so much in health policy, turns out to be more complicated than previously understood. Read More
New York had one of the nation's slowest-growing state economies last year, according to the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read More
Recent amendments to the House Republican health plan, which is heading to a potential vote this week, have done little to improve it from New York’s point of view. Read More
With a line-item veto last week, Governor Cuomo put a last nail in the coffin of a good idea that was never given a chance by Albany: analyzing the costs and benefits of health insurance mandates before passing them into law. Read More
From a New York perspective, the proposed repeal of itemized deductions for state and local tax payments was the (expected) headline item in the rough outline of a tax reform presented in Washington today by Trump administration officials. Read More
A new report card from the Leapfrog Group, a healthcare watchdog, paints an unflattering picture of safety in New York’s hospitals. Read More
New York is planning to demur from some of the Trump administration’s rule changes for Obamacare, including its much shorter enrollment window. Read More
The new state budget’s allocation of $500 million in capital funding for healthcare providers – the fifth such infusion in four years – comes with a notable lack of procedural controls or clarity of purpose. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo's "free" tuition plan bore all the earmarks of having been hastily reverse-engineered from a campaign slogan—a Bernie Sanders presidential campaign slogan, that is. Indeed, the governor didn't try hard to dispel that impression, inviting the Vermont senator himself to deliver a endorsement of the plan when it was first rolled out at a Queens College rally on Jan. 3. Read More