A combination of decades of free-wheeling generosity by local school boards, pressure to increase teacher pay from politically powerful unions, and state laws and policies that make it impossible for districts to rein in spending has gotten New York to the point where it spends more per student and offers the highest teacher salaries of any other state in the country. Read More
On Monday, as Empire Center fiscal expert E.J. McMahon noted, Census numbers pegged New York’s 2016 per-student outlays at $22,366, or nearly twice the $11,762-per-student national average. And the gap, McMahon adds, has only been growing. Read More
"I think the tax cap has induced a sense of complacency," said E.J. McMahon, founder of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank in Albany. "It’s seen as automatically keeping a fairly tight lid on the levy. But at the first sign of fiscal stress and added pressure for higher taxes, I'd expect turnout to rebound." Read More
The report — from the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany, N.Y.-based independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank — examined the effectiveness of New York's hospital ownership laws. For-profit hospitals are not common in the state due to 1960s-era laws that generally discourage for-profit ownership and prohibit publicly traded corporations from owning hospitals, according to the report. Read More
New York doled out $22,366 for each elementary and secondary schoolkid — 90 percent higher than the national average of $11,762, according to Empire Center research director E.J. McMahon. Read More
The Empire Center broke the news this week that the state Department of Taxation and Finance is working on an unincorporated business tax that might allow partners at law firms and investment banks and similar high-paying places to get around the federal limitation on deducting state and local taxes. Read More
As the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon notes this week, the latest budget update puts next year’s gap at $4 billion, up by $500 million just since February. Read More
The region’s highest 2017 effective tax rate - $62.95 per $1,000 of home value - was shouldered by Village of Liberty homeowners, according to an Empire Center report released Monday. Read More