Last April, lawyers for private kindergarten through grade 12 schools found themselves defending, before a state trial-court judge, private and religious schools’ right to operate. The lawyers, representing Jewish, Catholic and nonsectarian independent schools, were challenging sweeping new State Education Department edicts that would effectively force private schools to perform as de facto public schools. Read More
New York State's tax collectors prevailed in a key administrative ruling last month—but in the long run, the state's taxpayers will probably be net losers as a result. At issue here is the Empire State's effort to tax the investment income, dividends and capital gains earned in 2012 and 2013 by Nelson Obus, a hedge fund manager who during those years commuted regularly from his residence in New Jersey to his office in midtown Manhattan. Read More
Sen. Chuck Schumer raised the alarm Tuesday about a pending reduction in Medicaid funding for safety-net hospitals, which he said would have "devastating" effect in New York. His warning was misleading in several ways, not least because it left out an important bit of context: Schumer himself voted for the cuts he was deploring. In effect, he was taking credit for trying to clean up a mess he had helped to create. Read More
The Empire Center's annual release of Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) payroll data on the SeeThroughNY transparency website made an especially big splash—highlighting excessive overtime costs at the LIRR. Read More
Will the Regents and education bureaucrats succeed in forcing nonpublic schools to conform to unprecedented state control? Read More
Corrections Department employees qualified for average pensions of nearly $70,000, the highest average benefit for any agency grouping among the 7,990 New York City Employee Retirement System (NYCERS) members collecting their first full year’s worth of pension benefits in 2018, according to data posted today at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
Click headline for data table. Read More
When public schools across the Empire State open their doors for school year 2019-20, pupil enrollment will be at its lowest level in at least 30 years. Read More