Staff salaries are the dominant category of spending in public school budgets across the state. And the largest item within that category is teacher salaries, which consistently rank among the highest in the country. Read More
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In what he calls a “bold agenda” for New York’s future, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has dusted off one of Albany’s creakiest bipartisan infrastructure fantasies: high-speed passenger rail service. Read More
In the face of New York's rapidly rising Medicaid spending, both the Cuomo administration and some of its critics have pointed to demographics as a driving factor. The state's population is aging, they have said, so long-term care costs should be expected to increase. There are two main reasons to doubt this narrative. Read More
Amid Albany’s Medicaid over-spending crisis, the state Health Department is reconfiguring a little-known portion of the deficit-ridden program in what looks like a scheme to squeeze union dues from roughly 110,000 Medicaid-subsidized in-home caregivers. Read More
A fact-check of the op-ed by state Budget Director Robert Mujica, defending the governor's Medicaid proposals, shows it to include exaggerated and misleading arguments. Read More
The proposed increase in the Excelsior Scholarship income cap would build on a program that was fundamentally flawed, wasteful and unfair to begin with. Read More
The state Legislature should reject the Governor Cuomo’s proposal to expand the family income cap for the Excelsior Scholarships and devote more money to expanding the state’s existing Tuition Assistance Program (TAP), according to the testimony submitted to the joint legislative committees today by E.J. McMahon, research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
The main thing wrong with Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid budget is that it barely exists. His executive budget proposes to reduce funding for the state’s biggest and most important program by 10 percent, or $2.5 billion, but omits any plan for making that happen. Instead, the governor is delegating details to a panel of industry insiders who haven’t yet been named and don’t have a clear deadline. Read More