You don’t have to be a fan of the federal tax deal to realize its impact on states like New York has been misrepresented by most of its leading political critics. Read More
Commentary
Plenty of unintended consequences, positive and negative, will be lurking in the fine print of the tax-reform bill unveiled Thursday by House Republicans. But it’s already clear the plan would clobber Albany’s favorite cash cow: the seven-figure earners who generate more than 40 percent of the state income tax. Read More
Hypocrisy aside, Cuomo’s strident opposition to repeal of the SALT deduction is understandable. Even with a larger standard deduction, the outlined plan might not deliver a big tax cut for middle-class New Yorkers. Read More
The award for the most deceptive name in New York state government goes to an obscure but expensive program called the “Indigent Care Pool.” Read More
Progressive politicians jumping on Bernie Sanders’ Medicare-for-all bandwagon should be careful what they wish for – especially if they represent New York. Read More
New York pols need to recognize that it's in their own interest to pay more attention to these commuters, if only to keep their tax payments flowing smoothly. At the very least, that means giving a higher priority to infrastructure improvements that benefit taxpayers on both sides of the Hudson. Read More
President Trump last week suggested that economically struggling upstate New York residents should be willing to move to areas with better job prospects. This wasn’t exactly an original or outrageous idea — yet it still managed to ruffle feathers among defensive New York officials. Read More
The courtroom war over New York’s school funding is far from over. Read More
Over the past three years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reaped an unprecedented windfall of more than $10 billion in fines and penalties paid by major financial institutions for violating various state and federal banking laws. Coming virtually out of the blue, the windfall represented a unique opportunity to get ahead of the state’s most pressing problems — including but not limited to those of the transit system. It’s an opportunity Cuomo has mostly squandered. Read More
Albany Democrats never got the memo that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They’re peddling a universal health-care plan they claim would not only cost nothing more, but leave the state $45 billion richer. The plan might as well be signed by a Nigerian prince. Read More
Wednesday, Mayor de Blasio presented a fiscal 2018 Executive Budget that called for pension contributions totaling $9.6 billion — another all-time high. Yet city pension plans remain significantly underfunded even by lenient government accounting standards, posing a big risk to New York’s fiscal future. Read More
New York state, its local governments and public authorities are committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on public works in the next five to 10 years. But under current law, they’re also committed to wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on public works — to subsidize the above-market compensation of the state’s shrinking but politically influential construction unions. Read More