Over the past three years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has reaped an unprecedented windfall of more than $10 billion in fines and penalties paid by major financial institutions for violating various state and federal banking laws. Coming virtually out of the blue, the windfall represented a unique opportunity to get ahead of the state’s most pressing problems — including but not limited to those of the transit system. It’s an opportunity Cuomo has mostly squandered. Read More
A $500,000 grant to support a solar-powered carousel in Buffalo—raising that project’s total taxpayer subsidy to more than $1 million—was among the 1,782 local pork barrel projects awarded grants by state lawmakers in the final hours of their 2017 regular session. Read More
The 48,346-employee payroll of New York City’s fiscally stressed Health and Hospitals Corporation swelled to $2.9 billion last year, a 16 percent jump from $2.5 billion in 2014, according to data added today to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
The U.S. Senate GOP’s health bill, though pitched as more moderate than the House plan, would be harder on New York in at least one respect. Read More
Compared to national and statewide averages, rural counties in upstate New York have a much larger share of residents aged 65 and older, the latest Census Bureau estimates show. The 65+ population was 15.3 percent of the U.S. total as of mid-2016, according to census data released today. The Empire State as a whole was just a hair above the national average, with 15.4 percent of New Yorkers falling into the age category that demographers generally tag as elderly. Read More
The makers of the anti-addiction drug Vivitrol – whose controversial nationwide lobbying campaign was spotlighted by the New York Times last week – appear to be getting results in Albany. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo sprang his announcement of a five-year contract agreement with state's largest union on Tuesday afternoon— the last possible moment to win legislative approval of the deal so checks can start going out to union members. But he released absolutely no details of what he was about to ask lawmakers to approve before they end their session today. Read More
By an overwhelming margin, the state Assembly has approved a bill designed to partially inoculate New York’s government unions against a potential U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending the unions’ ability to extract dues-like “fees” from employees. Read More