If Gov. Cuomo has his way, New York could soon become the first state in the nation to raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour. Read More
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For a fifth consecutive year, Governor Andrew Cuomo is late in releasing the required Mid-Year Update to the state Financial Plan. The governor, who likes to boast of getting budgets adopted before the March 31 end of the fiscal year (which is not required by law), maintained his perfect record of never once meeting the Oct. 30 statutory deadline for filing the latest quarterly financial report, which is supposed to summarize the state's actual financial experience during the first six months of the year and to update projections for the next four years. Read More
The New York State Teachers' Retirement System (NYSTRS) earned only 5.2 percent on its investments—well short of its assumed rate of 8 percent—during the fiscal year ending last June 30. But taxpayer contributions to NYSTRS, already due to drop by more than four full percentage points of covered payroll in school year 2015-16, nonetheless are projected by the system actuary to decrease by a little bit more (up to 1.76 percentage points) in 2016-17. Read More
New York City firefighters and fire officers who retired during the 2015 fiscal year were eligible for average pensions of $113,341 pension, a nine percent increase over the previous year, according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center's transparency website. Read More
Year-over-year private-sector job growth has picked up in Buffalo and Rochester but is still sinking in the Southern Tier and weakening in the Hudson Valley, according to the latest statistics from the state Labor Department. Read More
Long Island town officials are crying the blues over the budgetary squeeze supposedly created by the state’s property-tax cap. They’re not alone: You’ll hear much the same from town pols elsewhere in the metro region and across New York state. But the thrust of their complaints — that the tax cap is somehow blocking urgent public projects and programs — just won’t hold water. Read More
Some Long Island town officials are crying the blues over the budgetary squeeze supposedly created by the state's property tax cap, according to Newsday. But the thrust of their complaints—that the tax cap is somehow blocking towns from funding urgent needs and projects—just won't hold water. Due to low inflation, the basic tax cap for local fiscal years beginning Jan. 1, 2016, will be 0.73 percent, lowest since the cap's 2011 enactment. Read More
More than 2,900 state and local government retirees are receiving pensions larger than $100,000, according to pension data added today to SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s newly relaunched transparency website. Read More