Gov. Cuomo’s 2017 state budget, which he’ll present next week, is likely to call for billions of dollars in new spending on highways and bridges. Unfortunately, taxpayers won’t get their money’s worth if the state continues to insist on rigging bids for public-works projects that all but guarantee the jobs will go to unions. Read More
Apparently looking to make a big splash with a pre-budget rollout of downstate infrastructure initiatives, Governor Andrew Cuomo aimed for the biggest body of water he could find: the Long Island Sound. The "2016 agenda" Cuomo unveiled before the Long Island Association today included revived plans for a third track on the main line of the Long Island Railroad, improvements to regional airports and other development projects. But the governor couldn't resist capping off the agenda with a real attention-getter: a $5 million feasibility study of "a tunnel connecting Long Island to either the Bronx, Westchester County or Connecticut." Read More
Here's a last look back at the Empire Center's web traffic highlights for the year just ended. Read More
New York's leading export remains people. Read More
The rapid rise and costly fall of Health Republic Insurance of New York, the largest nonprofit health insurance “co-op” established under President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, is a cautionary tale. Read More
The collapse of Health Republic Insurance of New York, a non-profit insurance co-op established under Obamacare, can be blamed largely on “an apparent breakdown in state oversight,” concludes a report released today by the Empire Center. The report says the state Department of Financial Services (DFS) should loosen its regulatory control of insurance premiums and refocus on the financial soundness of insurance companies. Read More
State regulators should have foreseen the failure of NY's Obamacare co-op. Read More
New York City's fiscal year 2015 payroll has been added to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More