While legislative leaders and Governor Cuomo were cooking their latest backroom state budget deal, the New York City Independent Budget Office was issuing five years' worth of updated statistics showing how heavily the city already depends on the volatile earnings of taxpayers at the top of the income pyramid. Read More
Employment growth in most upstate New York regions remained weak during the year ending in February, according to the latest monthly state Department of Labor jobs report. Read More
Upstate New York's population began to decline at a faster rate between mid-2014 and 2015, according to updated Census Bureau estimates. Read More
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Three years ago, Governor Andrew Cuomo blew a rare opportunity to fundamentally reform one of the most costly provisions of the New York State law regulating public-sector collective bargaining. Now he's about to blow it again. Read More
The average Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) employee was paid $100,253 during 2015, up from $97,673 in 2014, according to the latest data added to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
Buried in the budget bill passed by the state Senate last week was a provision that would add billions more dollars to New York City's already sizable long-term pension liabilities. The provision in question would increase disability retirement benefits for city police officers hired since 2009—and, by extension, also for city firefighters and members of other uniformed services. Read More
In 2014, the Empire Center created guidelines for what information local governments and school districts should make available on their websites—and found that most of the state's 500 largest municipalities and districts were not meeting that standard. Read More