Despite a concentration of world-famous hospitals in Manhattan, New York’s overall hospital industry ranks at or near the bottom on a range of performance benchmarks measuring quality, efficiency, financial health and equality of access, an Empire Center study has found. Read More
New York's newly enacted state budget for the fiscal year that started April 1 is balanced with higher-than-anticipated tax receipts, but out-year projected budget gaps have grown significantly larger, according to quarterly financial plan update issued late Friday afternoon by Governor Cuomo's Division of the Budget (DOB). Read More
The Empire Center has posted sortable online databases of per-pupil spending and tax levy increases proposed in 2018-19 school budgets that will go to the voters next Tuesday, May 15. Read More
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Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 15 are presenting spending plans that would increase property taxes as high as the 2011 property tax cap law allows, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
High-tax New York has just lost one of its oldest money-management firms to low-tax Nashville, Tennessee—highlighting an ongoing shift of Wall Street jobs, and of high earners in general. Read More
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed a bill making it harder for government workers to escape labor unions, he said it was just “the first step of the resistance.” Translation: It wasn’t the last favor Cuomo hopes to do for New York’s powerful public-sector unions in anticipation of the coming US Supreme Court decision in Janus v. AFSCME, which could void state laws compelling government workers to pay dues-like agency fees to unions they choose not to join. Read More
Our latest scan of pending health insurance mandates identified 120 bills, an increase of 29, or almost one-third, since Mandate Watch was inaugurated in March 2017. Read More