Press Room

"These are not ordinary times,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo intoned Thursday as he began a State of the State follow-up speech devoted to New York’s infrastructure needs — without accounting for the fact that Empire State infrastructure spending is uniquely prone to boondoggle. Read More

The results of this week’s Georgia Senate runoffs, assuring Democrats will soon control both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, had to come as a huge relief to Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Read More

As if a second COVID wave weren’t enough, New York’s prospects for economic recovery will face new headwinds — from Albany. Read More

As if a second wave of Covid-19 infections weren’t enough, New York’s prospects for economic recovery will face new headwinds—from Albany. Read More

After months of waiting for a federal coronavirus stimulus bailout that never materialized, Gov. Cuomo has staked the future stability of New York’s public finances on the outcome of this year’s election. Read More

With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More

Johan Sheridan ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a  against the state Department of Health on Friday. “This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Cente Read More

The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More

Michael Gormley ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost N Read More

Ed McKinley ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process,  noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar." Read More

As the harrowing past few months have made clear, New York was both unusually vulnerable to the coronavirus and dangerously underprepared to fight it. Read More

The 11 proposals, summarized in the table below, were submitted to Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team at a public comment forum on Friday at the Albany Capital Center. The Medicaid Redesign Team, appointed Feb. 4, is tasked with finding $2.5 billion in Medicaid savings to balance the state budget due April 1. Consistent with Cuomo’s guidelines, Hammond’s proposals would have no impact on current beneficiaries or local governments. Read More

The state’s current fiscal challenge is caused by excess spending, not insufficient taxes.  The governor’s projection of PIT receipts—which apparently have recovered from the post-tax reform disruption in the final quarter of fiscal 2019—assumes a steady continuing uptick in revenues across the next four years, despite the continuing phase-in of significant “middle class” income tax cuts through 2025.   But this could prove overly optimistic. Read More

The proposed increase in the Excelsior Scholarship income cap would build on a program that was fundamentally flawed, wasteful and unfair to begin with. Read More

The main thing wrong with Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid budget is that it barely exists. His executive budget proposes to reduce funding for the state’s biggest and most important program by 10 percent, or $2.5 billion, but omits any plan for making that happen. Instead, the governor is delegating details to a panel of industry insiders who haven’t yet been named and don’t have a clear deadline. Read More