#NYCoronavirus: With this year's tax return filing date push postponed to mid-July in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Governor Cuomo has revived his old complaints about the TCJA's $10,000 cap on itemized state and local tax (SALT) deductions. But under the circumstances—a crashing economy and exploding federal deficits—his case for restoring SALT is even weaker than it was before the crisis. Indeed, it verges on preposterous. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: The Cuomo administration is about to begin running up charges on that $11 billion credit card the Legislature handed the governor in the new budget. Under the budget's the Education, Labor and Family Assistance budget bill, Cuomo is authorized to borrow up to $11 billion this year in the form of up to $8 billion in bond anticipation notes (BANs) and $3 billion from “line of credit facilities and other similar revolving financing arrangements.” Read More
#NYCoronavirus: Governor Cuomo is invoking his "emergency" powers to unilaterally defer a 2 percent pay hike otherwise scheduled for most unionized state government workers during the new fiscal year. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: Downstate New Yorkers are three times more likely than upstaters to have been tested for Covid-19 – and four times more likely to have been positive when checked. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: The coronavirus pandemic has been an acid test for government, revealing bureaucratic incompetencies, unnecessary regulations—and, in Albany, an agency that has failed to perform one of its central functions. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: The state Health Department released additional coronavirus data that gives a clearer picture of which counties and age groups have been hardest hit by the pandemic so far. Read More
The new state budget finally takes credible steps to address the Medicaid crisis of recent history. What's missing is a clear plan for weathering the far larger crisis of the present and future. Read More
New York has just enacted a pandemic-crisis budget that might as well have been written in disappearing ink—shakily “balanced” on hopes of a huge federal bailout and ultimately backstopped by the potential for unprecedented deficit borrowing. Read More