A near record number of school budgets were approved across New York State in Tuesday’s vote. Many attributed the relative lack of controversy to the three-year-old property tax cap that limits tax-levy increases and an increase in state aid. Read More
Business leaders gathered with the public policy think tank the Empire Center to make the case to make the cap permanent. Read More
Eighteen school districts sought to override the state's property tax cap in yesterday's school budget votes—the fewest attempts since the tax cap was enacted. Seven of those districts failed to win the 60 percent supermajority required to override the cap. Read More
The state's property-tax cap has saved New York homeowners as much as $7.6 billion in school taxes since it was enacted in 2011, a report Tuesday contended. Read More
Since the enactment of the property tax cap, New York school property taxes have risen at the slowest rate since at least 1982. Read More
The state Senate's Republican majority is standing behind its pledge to make New York's property tax cap permanent. Read More
Otsego, Delaware and other small counties are like "orphans" facing forces beyond their control in the storm of upstate's economic challenges, a public policy analyst said Wednesday. Edmund J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy, spoke about upstate's deficit in economic growth to about 35 guests at a meeting of Citizen Voices at The Carriage House, 790 Southside Drive in Oneonta. Read More
Per-pupil spending in the 669 school districts outside New York’s five largest cities will climb next year by 2.5 percent, nearly twice the projected inflation rate, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. The analysis indicates that school districts' per-pupil property tax levies will increase by 2.1 percent in 2015-16. Read More