McMahon credits Cuomo for pushing to make the state’s property tax cap permanent. And he said the governor is holding the line on spending growth once again. Cuomo said he’s keeping the spending growth rate to 2 percent, but McMahon said the rate is actually closer to 3 percent. Read More
The proposed NY Health Act came under fire Tuesday at a conference in Albany sponsored by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank. Read More
The plan, though, may ultimately be modest because New York and the city already offer a variety of programs to help the uninsured, wrote Bill Hammond, director of health policy for the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany. Read More
But the latest Census report marks the third straight year New York has lost population, as the overall population in the country grows. New York continues to have more births than deaths, but it is losing residents to other states. The issue was noted in a report by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative Albany think tank. Read More
The Empire Center, a fiscally-conservative government watchdog, said the cap should become permanent, something that Republicans always wanted but could never accomplish during their control of the state Senate. “Cuomo’s cap has curbed taxes by billions of dollars, compared to previous trends and especially in profligate school districts,” wrote Research Director E.J. McMahon last week. Read More
Bill Hammond, with the fiscal watchdog group the Empire Center, says there are a lot of unintended consequences that could result from a single-payer system in New York, including reduced revenues for hospitals, and the need for as much as $139 billion in new taxes, according to a study by the Rand Corporation. "There’s a lot of misconceptions about how single-payer works, there’s a lot of wishful thinking about how much money would be saved and how much better things would be," Hammond said. "That’s not to defend the current system, there’s a lot of things that are wrong with the current system." Read More
While lawmakers have focused their attention elsewhere, representatives of the construction industry have continued to highlight their opposition to prevailing wage requirements. These rules mean that contractors have to pay workers a minimum pay rate while working on publicly funded construction projects. Some have blamed such requirements for making construction in New York so expensive. A 2017 report from the Empire Center for Public Policy stated that prevailing wage requirement increase costs on public construction projects by as much as 25 percent. Read More
Empire Center for Public Policy's Bill Hammond, a longtime critic of the NY Health Act, argued in NY Torch, a public policy blog, that that the proposal to accommodate municipal workers "would seem to create a two-tiered system, with one set of rules for city employees, and another set for everyone else." He said that the proposed amendment would also undermine any projected healthcare savings for New York City. Read More