“New York’s school districts are receiving record-high levels of aid from Albany to educate fewer students, and our school taxes are still climbing,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank out of Albany. Read More
This year’s 90-plus pension- and benefit-sweetener bills could cost state and local governments up to $200 million. While the current bills are less sweeping than some past giveaways, the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon says, “They’re all objectionable.” Read More
Bill Hammond, the health policy director at Empire Center, an Albany-based think tank, warned that other countries with single-payer plans, like the United Kingdom and Canada, “have long waiting times to see specialists, pay their doctors and nurses significantly less, and, in some cases, ration access to expensive procedures and drugs.” Read More
Repeal of Triborough, Girardin said, “would put school districts and teachers’ unions on a level playing field for the first time in decades. Teachers would have more incentive to reach an agreement than they do now, and school districts would have more leverage to ask for common sense changes such as employees contributing more toward their health insurance.” Read More
"Overtime is an unavoidable cost for virtually any business or government agency, but those costs are an indicator of how efficiently an organization is run," said Tim Hoefer, the executive director of Empire Center. "For Metro-North, the continued growth of those costs gives taxpayers and riders a good reason to question whether they’re getting the most for their money." Read More
Why are union members — and just the highest paid among them — the only ones who should be able to recoup expenses pertaining to their careers? What about people who pay to be members of professional associations? Wouldn’t a tax break for them help grow the wealth of those in the middle class even more? Read More
President Donald Trump unveiled a tax plan Wednesday that would eliminate a deduction that heavily benefits New Yorkers — especially on Long Island — and “undermine the state’s tax base,” officials and analysts said. Read More
A fiscally conservative think tank on Monday said the cost to taxpayers of government construction projects is inflated by 25 percent on average because state government requires that even non-union companies pay union wages on public works. Read More