Which upstate New York communities have the highest police pay by local and regional standards? The answer can be found in What They Make, the Empire Center’s annual examination of local government payrolls, which includes average total pay for uniformed police officers employed by 166 towns, cities and villages across upstate. Read More
The 2015-16 edition of What They Make, the Empire Center’s annual report on public payrolls, New York taxpayers to compare this key element of local government costs around the state. Read More
The Empire Center today released the newest edition of What They Make, its annual examination of local government payrolls. “What They Make lets taxpayers see how their local governments’ payrolls stack up,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center. “Big differences exist, even between neighboring communities, and taxpayers have a right to ask their elected officials why.” Read More
Three years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo blew a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform one of the most costly provisions of the New York State law regulating public-sector collective bargaining. Now he's about to blow it again. Read More
In 2014, the Empire Center created guidelines for what information local governments and school districts should make available on their websites—and found that most of the state's 500 largest municipalities and districts were not meeting that standard. Read More
"I think the narrative has gone askew as we talk about what to do about this," said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the government watchdog Empire Center for Public Policy. "We are one of the states with the highest property taxes in the nation, and the cost drivers are partially at the local level, but they're also driven by mandates from the states that aren't paid for." Read More
New York has seldom seen an executive initiative as politically radical or economically reckless as Gov. Cuomo’s proposal for a $15-per-hour statewide minimum wage. Read More
Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, argued that municipalities already have every incentive to streamline services and that little would be gained by "throwing more money at them" to do so. He also contended that unfunded state mandates are more to blame for high property taxes than the fact that New York has about 1,600 towns, villages, cities and counties. Read More