State of the State messages by New York governors customarily lay out general goals and priorities, rather than specifics. Even in general terms, however, there is a striking contrast between Governor Cuomo's latest State of the State and his first annual message to the Legislature, which he delivered five days after taking office 10 years ago. Read More
Going on four weeks into what should have been a mass vaccination program, it's increasingly clear that the Cuomo administration did not have – and does not have – an adequate plan for immunizing 20 million New Yor Read More
The Cuomo administration is quietly extending a temporary freeze on scheduled pay hikes for about 135,000 unionized state government employees and public college faculty members—although the largest affected labor union says it still expects those bucks to flow retroactively to its members in the coming fiscal year. Read More
The results of this week’s Georgia Senate runoffs, assuring Democrats will soon control both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, had to come as a huge relief to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Read More
After second-guessing the FDA with its own vaccine task force, the Cuomo administration is declining to share even basic information about that panel's approval process until mid-February. Read More
This year New York saw, among other things, the beginnings of the worst fiscal crisis since the Great Depression as the coronavirus pandemic and related shutdowns clobbered state tax revenues. The Empire Center worked through the year to help make se Read More
The Cuomo administration's recently released summary of contact tracing data was a tantalizing disappointment. Information that could have clarified the risks of different activities during the coronavirus pandemic was Read More
Mayor de Blasio began his tenure by rewarding New York City’s worst-performing schools with added funding. He’s now set to end it by punishing the city’s best. Read More