New York’s slow reopening has begun just in time for a virtual April 15 — Tax Day 2.0, pushed back three months by the novel-coronavirus pandemic. In a way, it’s the end of an era: The tax returns due to be filed on Wednesday will report incomes earned in 2019, the close of a decade-long economic expansion. Read More
The Empire Center for Public Policy today filed a lawsuit to force the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to disclose payroll records for MTA police officers that it withheld in violation of the state’s Freedom of Information Law (FOIL). Read More
Empire Center's E.J. McMahon talks with Bill Hammond about New York's nursing home polices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Read More
Predicting doom and gloom for New York is all the rage. While we do face difficult fiscal choices for the next several years, those with skin in the game are contradicting this “death of New York” narrative — and offering a way out. Developers across the city are asking communities for nothing more than regulatory permission to add jobs, mixed-income housing and new high-quality public spaces. Yet just this week, Councilmember Jimmy Van Bramer denounced a multi-billion dollar investment in offices and homes in Long Island City — shortly after denouncing 2,700 new mixed-income homes in Astoria. Read More
A new report from the state Health Department tries to deflect blame for thousands of coronavirus deaths in the state's nursing homes—but undermines its own case by withholding data and engaging in tendentious analysis. Read More
New York's economy ended the first quarter of this year in virtual free fall, the latest federal data show. Read More
The headlines surrounding this week’s New York City budget naturally focused on #DefundthePolice demands. But for all its larger potential implications for New Yorkers’ security and quality of life, the partially illusory $1 billion “cut” in the New York Police Department budget was a sideshow in fiscal terms. Read More
New York is finally ahead of the coronavirus, but its outbreak stands as a world-wide horror story. A sophisticated city was caught unprepared and suffered some of the worst levels of infection and death. The need for an investigation is clear. The harder question is who can credibly take the lead. Read More