The Empire Center for Public Policy this week filed Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) appeals with the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) after six of its seven subsidiaries failed to release public payroll records. Read More
Latest
The new state budget features a larger-than-usual increase in Medicaid spending and two new coverage mandates for private insurers – adding to the already steep costs of health care for New York's taxpayers and policyholders. Read More
The hastily approved raise for New York’s governor had an unintended consequence: sweetening the Tier 6 pension plan enacted in 2012 and saddling taxpayers with an untold amount of higher pension costs. Read More
The Empire Center has updated its online Spend-O-Meter to reflect the record size of New York’s newly enacted $175.5 billion budget for fiscal 2020. Read More
New York’s new budget — the actual state-government expenditure plan, that is, as opposed to numerous side issues packaged with it — apparently came in close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bottom line. Read More
The impending enactment of a permanent property tax levy cap in New York is a truly historic moment. Since its founding in 2005, the Empire Center has identified a broad cap on property tax levies as a top policy priority. Read More
With the Legislature getting ready to pass a budget for the fiscal year starting April 1, some fresh data and analysis emerging from the world outside Albany in the past week or so has raised new questions about the durability of the state's revenue base. Read More
Few public policies carry a more misleading moniker than New York’s “prevailing wage” law for public works projects — a job-destroying cost-escalator that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the State Legislature may be on the verge of expanding as part of their impending state budget deal. Read More