With just three work days remaining in the legislative session, a number of bills that would loosen the property-tax cap await consideration in both houses. The pending legislative efforts range from small modifications to the cap formula to allow more spending without triggering the cap’s supermajority requirement, to doing away with the supermajority requirement altogether. Read More
Confirmation hearings for Maria Vullo to be superintendent of the Department of Financial Services hit a sour note when the questioning turned to last year’s collapse of Health Republic. Read More
Public elementary and secondary school spending in New York reached an all-time high of $20,600 per-pupil in 2013-14 school year, topping all states and exceeding the $11,009 per-pupil national average by 87 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released today. Read More
Days after saddling New York employers with higher minimum wages and the nation's most generous paid family leave mandate, Governor Andrew Cuomo and legislative leaders announced in early April that they had formed a temporary Business Regulation Council to come up with ideas for improving the business climate. The panel's recommendations are, to virtually no one's surprise, underwhelming. Read More
The state Senate is considering a measure to force New Yorkers to buy heating oil blended with biodiesel—but it’s not the kind of environmentally friendly, “green” policy its supporters would have you believe. Read More
Is the Cuomo administration’s effort to save money on health-care coverage for certain immigrants driving up Obamacare premiums for everyone else? Read More
For the first time in decades, at least one house of the Legislature may be ready to advance reform of New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), long identified as a major obstacle to growth across the state. Read More
Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas have introduced what they're calling “The World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan.” It’s hard to see how it amounts to a workable plan at all. Read More
Remember the three-day New York City transit strike of December 2005? If you do, you must be imagining things—because, according to an official legislative filing by Assemblyman Peter Abbate, Jr. of Brooklyn, there hasn't been a transit work stoppage in the city since 1989. Read More
Should New Yorkers -- and Americans generally -- provide government-financed health coverage for undocumented immigrants? Making a case for yes is the president and CEO of the New York State Health Foundation, David Sandman, in an op-ed today for the Huffington Post. Read More
New York’s health plans are pressing for dramatically higher premiums in 2017, a sign of financial turbulence in the insurance markets for individuals and small businesses as the Affordable Care Act enters its seventh year. Read More
Twenty-nine of the 37 districts that sought to override the property tax cap were successful in yesterday’s school budget votes, as the majority of districts elected to limit their tax increases to the cap itself. Read More