Category: Media Coverage

“The premise of the pied-à-terre tax — get money from wealthy nonresidents — sounds reasonable on the surface,” said E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy think tank. “The main problem with the idea is the assumption that an entirely new tax is needed in what’s already the nation’s most heavily taxed and wealthy big city, in order to fund the capital plan of a transit system that has yet to demonstrate it can effectively spend the money it already has.” Read More

There's only one problem with that formula, said Bill Hammond, director of health policy at the right-leaning Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany. "It doesn't work," Hammond said. Read More

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Overall, 52 educators from the Hudson Valley in 2018 were eligible for pensions of $160,000 or more, according to a report issued by SeeThroughNY, an online project of the Empire Center for Public Policy in Albany. Read More

Although the IRS ruling hasn’t formally been made final yet and Bellone is promising a legal fight, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center, an anti-tax think tank, said Suffolk taxpayers should be skeptical of putting money into the proposed charitable fund. “Any contribution to something like the Suffolk County fund is by no means guaranteed a tax deduction, so the message to taxpayers is don’t count on it,” McMahon said in an email. He called Bellone’s plan “nothing new — basically a Suffolk echo of Cuomo a year ago.” Read More

An analysis of hospital ratings statewide by the Albany-based Empire Center found that 48 of the 151 hospitals graded in New York received a one-star rating, up from 33 in 2017. The state's hospitals received an average of 2.18 stars out of five, down from 2.32 as of 2017. Read More

E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center noted that the study relied on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, whose methodology he described as "lousy." McMahon further asserted that New York state contains multiple regional economies and differences in tax codes that make such statewide analyses inaccurate. Read More

Under state law, the impasse means Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli will issue a revenue forecast on or before March 5. Legislators consistently push for higher numbers than the governor, but the current situation represents the first time in Mr. Cuomo’s three-term gubernatorial tenure that he and the Legislature have been unable to reach consensus. “It means they are getting off to a testy start, but it doesn’t mean they are doomed and they are not going to be able to do a budget,” said E.J. McMahon, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank. Read More