Category: Media Coverage

Skoufis’ legislation references a 2014 Empire Center highlighted the poor quality of municipal websites many of which lacked basic information. The report found that less than 20% of local governments received a passing grade on their website’s availability of information and usability including two municipalities that did not have a website. Some of those websites have improved over the past five years, including Jamestown’s, which received an “F” rating in 2014. The updated city website includes all of the information Skoufis’ legislation would mandate. Read More

The logic for focusing on counties on either side of the border is that, being right next to each other, they presumably share similar regional economies. The chances that you're comparing apples and oranges — that your analysis will be thrown off by random events and confounding variables — is minimized. "The Fed researchers sort of assumed, well, these are border areas so they're similar," E.J. McMahon, the founder and research director at Empire Center, told The Week. "But they're not actually similar, and they're in different regional economies." Read More

A 2017 Empire Center study found that these prevailing-wage requirements boost statewide project costs by 13 percent to 25 percent. Bloated wages are compounded by union rules that drive down productivity — that is, the amount of work done per hour. For example, even a fully automated elevator must be controlled by an “operating engineer” at a construction site. Plumbers, electricians and painters cannot perform even modest tasks outside their classifications. Read More

Earlier this week, the Empire Center did its own report on the plummeting numbers when it comes to students. Overall, the 2019-20 enrollment is at its lowest levels in New York state in the last 30 years. Read More

As reported by the Empire Center last week, “The number of students enrolled in New York state public schools is the lowest recorded in 30 years.” Since 2000, enrollment in public schools has declined by more than 10 percent statewide with most of it upstate as enrollment in New York City schools has increased 1.3 percent in the last 10 years. Students are not leaving to go to private or parochial schools either because they, too, are showing declines, down about 8 percent in the last decade. Read More

An analysis by Bill Hammond of The Empire Center for Public Policy said the continued drop bolsters the case against the Albany Legislature passing a new law imposing a state government-run health insurance, which Democratic candidates for president are pushing for on a national level. Read More

According to Ken Girardin, a labor analyst at the right-leaning Empire Center for Public Policy, every new police officer will cost the MTA roughly $56,000, which means the new personnel would initially cost the MTA roughly $28 million a year. Those costs should rapidly increase over time, as police salaries rapidly increase. Read More

“If you have these really young kids and teens getting hooked, then that’s not good," said Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy. "But the first step would be to do some research, have a public hearing, get the best expert evidence that you have. Instead of reacting to headlines, find out what’s really going on and proceed with proposed regulations.” Read More