The tax cap effect was on full display in yesterday’s school budget voting. School budgets were approved at a record-high rate of 99.3 percent, adding to evidence that districts can live within a property tax cap set at either 2 percent or the prior year’s average rate of inflation, whichever is less. Read More
The House GOP is a model of cautious deliberation next to the Assembly’s handling of the New York Health Act, which would establish a statewide single-payer plan. Read More
The Cuomo administration has proposed modifications to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), which has long hindered growth and development in New York State. While the changes under consideration by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) would represent at least one important step in a pro-growth direction, the proposed tweaks to SEQR would also clear a smoother path for key Cuomo priorities, such as the development of vast solar panel farms and wind turbine installations required by the governor’s renewable energy push. And in some other respects, the proposed SEQR changes would create even more development red tape. Read More
What would happen to New York’s popular Essential Plan under the House Republican health bill? The answer, like so much in health policy, turns out to be more complicated than previously understood. Read More
New York had one of the nation's slowest-growing state economies last year, according to the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read More
Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 16 are presenting spending plans that call for increasing 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
Click headline for data table. Read More
Recent amendments to the House Republican health plan, which is heading to a potential vote this week, have done little to improve it from New York’s point of view. Read More