Category: Blog

Our MTA payroll summary was only the second most-viewed SeeThroughNY news release of 2019. To find out which of  transparency postings got the most attention this year, scroll through the list of the 2019 Top 10 SeeThroughNY press releases. Read More

Medicaid and other healthcare issues dominated the most-read posts on the Empire Center's NYTorch blog in 2019—a year that's ended under the shadow of a major state Medicaid budget overrun first disclosed on this site. Read More

Budget deficit? What budget deficit? With today’s pending recommendation from the Board of Regents, New York's education establishment is united in proposing that state aid to America's best-funded preK-12 public school system be increased next year by at least $2 billion. The figure is nearly double the amount projected in Governor Cuomo's financial plan—which showed the state is running deeply in the red and facing its largest budget shortfall since the Great Recession. Read More

The Cuomo administration has issued a remarkably flimsy, misleading and superficial analysis of the minimum wage increases enacted by New York State since 2013. Read More

The remarkable thing about state's multi-billion-dollar Medicaid crisis is that it is almost entirely the result of the Cuomo administration's own actions. There is no economic downturn or change in federal policy that explains the program's current $4 billion deficit, or its $3 billion projected gap in the next fiscal year, as confirmed in Friday's mid-year update to the state financial plan. Read More