The Cuomo administration has approved 2,740 capital grants for more than $1 billion in executive and legislative pork-barrel projects. Read More
Tag: SMFP
Call it pig in a blanket. Gov. Cuomo and state legislative leaders have brought pork back big-time, wrapped in a dense layer of bureaucracy and with a side of alphabet-soup misdirection. Read More
A breakdown of 271 projects totaling $49 million has been added to the Empire Center’s exclusive SeeThroughNY online database of items lined up for funding under the State and Municipal Facilities Program, a $1.5 billion pork slush fund supported by borrowed money. Read More
A state oversight board this week is set to green-light a $486 million payment to the SUNY Polytechnic real estate subsidiary that is at the heart of the federal probe into Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion initiative. Read More
Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli just issued a set of fiscal reform proposals designed to address the continuing lack of accountability and transparency in key areas of New York's budget. While by no means representing a fiscal panacea, they are solid ideas, deserving of broad public and legislative support. Read More
The budget adopted by New York’s Legislature last week was described by Gov. Cuomo as “the best plan that the state has produced . . . in decades, literally.” If this is truly the “best” New York can do, we’re in even more trouble than we thought. Read More
The new state budget will fund a 35 percent expansion of a murky $1.1 billion pork-barrel slush fund controlled by Governor Andrew Cuomo and state lawmakers. Read More
New Yorkers now can scrutinize more state pork-barrel spending details than ever, thanks to a newly expanded feature on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Recipient names and amounts for nearly 4,000 state grants totaling more than $600 million, including more than 500 approved on the final day of the 2015 legislative session, were added to SeeThroughNY today. Read More