For the millionaire earners who generate an outsized share of New York State's income tax receipts, a possible congressional deal to trim the top tax rate in the final federal tax reform bill would take some of the sting out of losing the state and local tax (SALT) deduction. Read More
The lame-duck supervisor of Hempstead, New York’s largest town, has inked the most indefensible no-layoff deal in Long Island’s history of open-handed labor relations—guaranteeing union jobs while asking for nothing in return. Read More
For all the taxes that Congress is aiming to cut, one has surprisingly dodged the ax so far: the $14.3 billion “Health Insurance Tax,” or HIT. Read More
Federal officials have reportedly confirmed that they are cutting off a major portion of funding for New York’s Essential Plan, opening a roughly $1 billion hole in the state budget and raising new doubts about the future of a rapidly growing health insurance option for the working poor. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo has signed a bill mandating broad insurance coverage for three-dimensional mammography, formally known as digital breast tomosynthesis, despite a lack of evidence about the long-term efficacy of the procedure. Read More
New York's second largest public pension fund continues to move—at a glacial pace—towards a more reasonable and prudent assumption of its future investment earnings. Read More
A bill requiring health plans to cover digital breast tomosynthesis, a three-dimensional type of mammography, has been delivered to Governor Andrew Cuomo’s office for his signature or veto. If the measure is enacted into law, it would be a classic case of healthcare politics rushing ahead of medical science. Read More
For a second consecutive year, the state Public Service Commission (PSC) has deeply slashed the amount of renewable energy that utility companies are forced to buy under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Clean Energy Standard (CES). The move casts further doubt on the governor’s goal of having renewables supply 50 percent of the state’s electricity by 2030—while reinforcing the CES program’s status as primarily a bailout for money-losing upstate nuclear plants. Read More