New Yorkers now can scrutinize more state pork-barrel spending details than ever, thanks to a newly expanded feature on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Recipient names and amounts for nearly 4,000 state grants totaling more than $600 million, including more than 500 approved on the final day of the 2015 legislative session, were added to SeeThroughNY today. Read More
So, how is Governor Andrew Cuomo paying for that $100 billion infrastructure "development initiative" that, as he put in his State of the State message yesterday, "would make Governor Rockefeller jealous"? The answer: for the most part, he actually isn't. Read More
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) could be taking the money-losing state Barge Canal off the back of the Thruway Authority under the fiscal 2017 state budget that will be proposed today by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Assuming this Buffalo News report is true, it would explain how Cuomo intends to finance his proposal to freeze Thruway tolls for five years even while building the $4.8 billion Tappan Zee Bridge replacement. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo has embraced the “fight for $15,” pledging to make New York the first state to impose a $15-an-hour minimum wage on virtually its entire private-sector workforce. How would a universal $15 minimum wage affect employment prospects for New York’s poor and unskilled? Read More
The recent collapse of Health Republic Insurance—disrupting health coverage for 215,000 state residents, and leaving doctors and hospitals with upwards of $200 million in unpaid claims—should have been cause for soul-searching at the state Department of Financial Services (DFS). Instead, based on the department’s first extensive public comments on the issue, given at a legislative panel last week, DFS officials seem to be in denial about their role in the demise of Health Republic, the largest non-profit health insurance cooperative set up three years ago under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. Read More
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments today in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, and the stakes couldn’t be higher for New York’s politically powerful public-sector unions. Read More
E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, testified before the Senate Labor Committee on the impact of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposal to impose a $15 statewide minimum wage. Read More
The statewide $15 minimum wage proposed by Governor Andrew Cuomo would cost New York at least 200,000 jobs, with the most severe impact felt in upstate regions that are already struggling to create jobs, E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, testified today. Read More