Governor Cuomo frequently has . But the unemployment rate, in particular, can be greatly misleading as an indicator of economic growth—or the lack of it. To understand why, it's important to consider how these statistics are gathered and calculated Read More
The charts and tables in this section are based on private establishment data from the , or QCEW, as prepared by the New York State Department of Labor in cooperation with the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. The base period of comparison is the Read More
The highest earning one percent of New York City residents generated 43 percent of city income taxes and 51 percent of the New York State income taxes collected from individuals living in the city as of 2016, according to newly released data from the Independent Budget Office (IBO). The IBO's latest tax liability estimates highlight once again New York's heavy dependence on the top 1 percent, for which the income cut point as of 2016 was $713,706. Read More
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In a consequential win for government transparency, the New York State Supreme Court has ordered a Long Island school district to comply with the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL), following years of evasion. In addition to providing its teacher and superintendent contracts, Malverne Union Free School District has reimbursed the Empire Center for Public Policy’s legal expenses. Read More
Unearthed videos of 1982 Cuomo-Lehrman debates: An example of how much (and, in some ways, how little) has changed in NY politics over the intervening decades. Read More
More than 120 employees of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected $300,000 or more during the city’s 2018 fiscal year, according to the latest payroll data added to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. The top 2017 paycheck at DEP was $216,112. Read More
New York State's so-called millionaire tax, temporarily raising the state's top income tax rate to 8.82 percent from the permanent law limit of 6.85 percent, is next scheduled to expire at the end of 2019. The added tax generates roughly $4.5 billion a year, about 9 percent of net personal income tax revenues, making New York more dependent than ever on the highest-earning one percent of its taxpayers. The future of the tax has now emerged as an issue in the gubernatorial campaign. Read More