New Yorkers by a margin of more than two-to-one said they aren’t getting their money’s worth from taxes they pay in the state, according to recent polling by the Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany. Read More
Month: February 2025
Although Governor Hochul said last week that the current trajectory of Medicaid spending is "not sustainable," the upward trend is even steeper than she and her budget director have acknowledged. Read More
Perhaps the most damning commentary on Gov. Hochul’s Medicaid spending plan — which made up roughly half of the $252 billion state budget she released Tuesday — was the silence of the attack dogs. Last year, the hospital lobby spent millions on TV ads falsely accusing Hochul of “cutting” the state-run health plan, which covers 7 million lower-income New Yorkers. This year, the ad campaign has gone quiet, a sign she is giving hospitals everything they could want and more. Read More
New York in 2022 told school districts they’d be barred from purchasing gasoline- or diesel-powered buses after 2027, and instead have to buy electric buses at more than double the upfront cost. “The purchase of new electric buses will help grow the market,” officials later pledged, “which will in turn help reduce prices.” Unfortunately for taxpayers, those reductions aren’t materializing—because state officials put the prices, and future increases, on cruise control. Read More
Financing and regulating health care delivery is one of the biggest responsibilities of state government, yet Governor Hochul had remarkably little to say on that topic in her State of the State speech on Tuesday. Read More
In response to Governor Hochul’s State of the State address and policy book, Empire Center experts issued the following reactions: "There was a big mismatch between Governor Hochul’s emphasis on affordability and the substance of the speech. S Read More
Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York. Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More