Category: Media Coverage

Out of the 59,241 educators in the retirement system earning six-figure pay last year, 87% were employed in downstate suburban districts, according to a review by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany. Read More

Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank based in Albany, is criticizing the scholarship, saying the excelsior program is limited to SUNY and CUNY students even though it says private schools educate more students. Read More

Let's start with Medicaid. In March, with Medicaid spending running far over budget, the governor quietly delayed into April a $2 billion payment due to providers. April is the start of the new fiscal year, so the move technically kept Medicaid spending under the cap that he'd instituted. The maneuver was discovered only a few months later, when sharp-eyed journalist Bill Hammond found a line about the payment delay in a budget document. Read More

At the same time, a government watchdog group says New York needs to get its Medicaid spending under control. The Empire Center is concerned the state will consider delaying $1 billion in payments to avoid piercing its annual cap for the second time in a year.  Read More

William Hammond, director of health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany think tank, said if staffing ratios are imposed on hospitals, it would likely lead to "vast amounts of overtime" paid to nurses as their employers struggle to comply with the mandate at a time when nurses are already in short supply in the labor market. Read More

The cost of New York’s Medicaid program has been growing exponentially. According to a recent report from the Empire Center, Medicaid costs in New York went from $62.6 billion in 2016, to an expected $74.5 billion in 2020, an increase of more than 20%. This same report found that New York’s Medicaid per-capita spending was 79% higher than the national average. Read More

As Bill Hammond of the Empire Center think tank pointed out on Monday, this move was meant to avoid payment cuts that would have been triggered under the “global cap” for the program. Read More

It has been repeatedly documented by internal MTA, the MTA inspector general, state comptroller, Citizens Budget Commission, Empire Center for Public Policy audits and reports, along with numerous newspaper stories. Read More