Category: Commentary

At stake is not only the quality of care for 20 million New Yorkers, but also the fate of a fifth of the economy and the livelihoods of 1.2 million health workers. Read More

Unearthed videos of 1982 Cuomo-Lehrman debates: An example of how much (and, in some ways, how little) has changed in NY politics over the intervening decades. Read More

This weekend, just days ahead of a primary that polls say he’ll win handily, Gov. Andrew Cuomo will take the wheel of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s refurbished 1932 Packard for a celebratory drive across the replacement for the old Tappan Zee Bridge. Read More

The overarching scandal here wasn’t bid-rigging or the pay-to-play pattern in the developers’ contributions to the governor’s reelection campaign. At the root was a simply awful public policy — corporate welfare on steroids — that neither Cuomo nor most of his critics have definitively renounced, even now. Read More

New York pushes more of its Medicaid expenses onto local government than any other state — an almost $8 billion cost-shift that contributes to high property taxes from Montauk to Niagara Falls. Read More

This week’s US Supreme Court ruling in Janus v. AFSCME was not unexpected — and neither was the agitated, high-volume reaction from Gov. Cuomo and the public-sector union bosses who are his strongest political allies. Read More

What does the Janus ruling mean for the fiscal future of the Empire State, home of the country’s most unionized public sector? It depends, as always, on our elected officials. Read More

As a 19th-century Manhattan politician once observed, “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” Some things never change. On balance, New Yorkers would probably be better off if this year’s legislative session ended ahead of its scheduled June 21 adjournment. Read More