Proposed changes to New York's so-called "free tuition" program should be taken off the table to allow lawmakers proper time to do their homework on the subject. Read More
Category: Media Coverage
New York's health insurance premium costs are surging at a rate higher than almost every other state in the nation. Read More
Groups like the Empire Center for Public Policy, a right-leaning fiscal watchdog, say that rising premium costs are linked to multiple issues, including the high cost of living, the number of unionized healthcare workers, and "heavy state taxes levied directly on health insurance." Read More
Data from Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany found that University at Buffalo football coach Lance Leipold was the sixth highest paid New York state employee for 2019. According to SeeThroughNY, Leipold made $663,500 total in 2019, the highest among all coaches at public universities in the state of New York. Read More
As the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, I have been front and center during state budget hearings that have just concluded. The hearings encompassed 11 days and countless hours drilling down into every aspect of the governor’s budget proposal. Read More
But fiscal watchdogs didn't see it that way. E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for Public Policy, one of the fiscal monitoring groups at the Capitol Tuesday, said the Cuomo administration's leisurely way of releasing budget documents - including key pieces of legislation needed to pass to make up the fiscal plan's specifics - was a show of "contempt for the public, the taxpayers and the Legislature. Every year this process gets murkier and less transparent." Read More
“The Assembly’s whole theory on this is it’s not a spending problem, it’s a revenue problem,” said Bill Hammond, the director of health policy at the Empire Center, a conservative think tank. “The whole idea that you would use a carrot and stick to control Medicaid costs, I think it’s a nonstarter.” Read More
E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center said the budget must reflect that the state has a spending problem, not a shortage of revenue. He said Cuomo can’t just “paper over” this year’s deficit by tapping reserves and employing gimmicks such as one-shot, nonrecurring revenues, but must institute long-term spending cuts and efficiencies in the budget so deficits don’t deepen in bad economic times. Read More