"New Yorkers have paid a steep price for labor peace" under the 40-year-old Taylor Law authorizing collective bargaining by public employee unions, says a report issued today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. [Read_more]
New York’s 40-year-old Public Employees Fair Employment Act—best known as the Taylor Law—was intended to protect the public from strikes while extending collective-bargaining rights to government workers. But while public-sector work stoppages have become rare, municipal and school officials fear the Taylor Law unduly favors public-employee unions at taxpayer expense. [Read_more]
New York’s new $121 billion budget spends at a rate of more than $331 million per day, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. [Read_more]
Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s historic education-reform plan aims to hold New York’s schools more accountable than ever before. But is the state’s educational-accountability system equipped to meet this challenge? [Read_more]
Gov. Spitzer's proposed budget "sends the wrong signal to firms that might otherwise consider investing or expanding in our state" by raising taxes on some large corporations, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy said in testimony before the Legislature's joint fiscal committees. [Read_more]
Medicaid spending on the elderly rose five times faster in New York than in other states during the most recent five-year period for which data are available, according to a report issued by the Empire Center. [Read_more]
One of the chief architects of the landmark federal welfare reform law of 1996 will be among the speakers at an upcoming Empire Center policy forum exploring the law's impact nationally and in New York. [Read_more]
New York is among the nation’s lowest ranking states when it comes to economic freedom, according to a report that focuses on the United States and 10 Canadian provinces. [Read_more]
The soaring cost of New York State's public pension systems can be permanently controlled by shifting to the sort of employer-subsidized individual retirement plans now popular in the private sector, according to an updated study of the state's pension structure by the Empire Center for Public Policy. [Read_more]
Besieged by the related problems of soaring Medicaid and private health-insurance costs, a growing number of states are enacting innovative programs to curb expenses, improve services and expand access to affordable health care. Some of the nation’s leading health policy experts will gather at an Empire Center policy forum in Albany on Sept. 26 to share insights and ideas that might offer models for New York State. [Read_more]
Even if the Legislature doesn't add to Governor George Pataki's budget proposal, the state spending increase during his final term will be the largest since Mario Cuomo's second term in the late 1980s, according to the Empire Center's overview of the 2006-07 Executive Budget.
After adjusting for a shift of aid payments between the current fiscal year and the coming year, the Empire Center report estimates the governor's proposed state funds spending increase for fiscal 2006-07 comes to just over 7 percent, or two and a half times the projected inflation rate. Assuming this figure holds, the total State Funds budget increase since fiscal 2002-03 will be 28 percent, or double the inflation rate, the report says. [Read_more]
New York State can save money on special education by shifting to a new funding system and can improve parental satisfaction with special education programs by offering a universal voucher for disabled students, according to a report issued today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. [Read_more]
