Polling this month showed that two-thirds of the nation’s teachers would prefer to stay out of the classroom this fall, and teachers unions across America are poised to keep schools from reopening. The unions say the safety of their members is their top concern, yet, truth is, their bottom lines are just as critical. That’s because the pandemic represents their biggest financial threat since teachers won the right to stop paying them. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: While daily life has been disrupted, essential functions must go on amid the coronavirus crisis—including the budgeting process for the state’s nearly 700 school districts. Read More
This week’s US Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME was not unexpected — and neither was the agitated, high-volume reaction from Gov. Cuomo and the public-sector union bosses who are his strongest political allies. Read More
The Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) reform bill signed by Governor Cuomo today is a huge win for government transparency in New York. Read More
Taxpayers beware: the annual push to water down New York’s property tax cap is underway in the state Legislature. Read More
For the first time in decades, at least one house of the Legislature may be ready to advance reform of New York's State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), long identified as a major obstacle to growth across the state. Read More
In 2014, the Empire Center created guidelines for what information local governments and school districts should make available on their websites—and found that most of the state's 500 largest municipalities and districts were not meeting that standard. Read More
New York’s Legislature has been exempt from many provisions of the state Freedom of Information Law since FOIL was first enacted in 1974. The Assembly and Senate ultimately decide how much legislative information to make public. This makes about as much sense as putting Cookie Monster in charge of security at the Chips Ahoy factory. As a result, a lot of information on legislative matters ranging from individual employee timesheets to a billion-dollar slush fund has been concealed from taxpayers. But if Governor Cuomo has his way, that could soon change. Read More