Commentary

Andrew Cuomo picked a portentous day to launch his New York City mayoral campaign. Sunday was the fifth anniversary of his announcement, as governor, of the city’s first confirmed case of Covid-19. Read More

Every business owner in the state, looking at his or her own challenges, their tax bills, their regulatory burden, should be asking the question: How different would things be if my company was a politically favored project being announced by the governor? What favors would Albany do for me? What would Micron get? Read More

A central provision of New York state law — its prohibition on public-employee strikes — is at risk of breaking into pieces, as Gov. Hochul frantically tries to tape the shards back together. Read More

Perhaps the most damning commentary on Gov. Hochul’s Medicaid spending plan — which made up roughly half of the $252 billion state budget she released Tuesday — was the silence of the attack dogs. Last year, the hospital lobby spent millions on TV ads falsely accusing Hochul of “cutting” the state-run health plan, which covers 7 million lower-income New Yorkers. This year, the ad campaign has gone quiet, a sign she is giving hospitals everything they could want and more. Read More

What was expected to be a mundane state-ordered study into how Albany doles out cash to local school districts turns out to be required reading for New York taxpayers — and state lawmakers. Read More

Fans of ’s “Medicare at Home” proposal should study up on New York’s bloated home healthcare system, which covers about 850,000 people. Its large scale and rapid growth embody a Read More

Gov. Hochul’s overhaul of the  reached a milestone last week when she named a Georgia-based company as the winning bidder to be the program’s statewide “fiscal intermediary” — and to replace  that currently handle those duties. The  Read More

It’s a pity New York cannot power its economy on hubris, but state officials this week gave it a try. Read More

So much for “no means no.” That’s the message from the state Court of Appeals, which ruled last week that New Yorkers don’t need an excuse to cast an absentee ballot by mail when they’re otherwise able to vote in person — even though the voters themselves have directly rejected such a measure. Read More

A state-ordered study of New York’s pandemic response has finally appeared, and it’s shaping up as a minor disaster of its own. Read More

Gov. Kathy Hochul has taken blistering criticism for postponing congestion pricing, a long-planned $15 toll on drivers entering lower Manhattan meant to reduce traffic — and collect $15 tolls. Most of the drama may be playing out in New York City, but pay attention, upstate: you stand to lose — or win — in this fight. Read More

Amid all the bipartisan noise, however, most Empire State tax filers may have noticed something interesting: their federal tax bills haven’t changed much at all. Even in highly taxed New York suburbs, most home-owning families with children are feeling a smaller federal tax bite. Read More