Governor Cuomo’s license plate design contest was a PR ploy masking a nickel-and-dime revenue raiser. Read More
Category: Commentary
Last week’s surprise resignation of the state education commissioner, MaryEllen Elia, leaves New York schools at a crossroads. Depending on whom the Board of Regents selects to succeed Elia, the commissioner can serve as a force for reform or for preserving a troubled status quo. Read More
New York's offshore wind project will demand massive subsidies—ultimately billed to ratepayers. Read More
When lawmakers in Albany passed the state budget last spring, Gov. Andrew Cuomo declared it “both timely and fiscally responsible.” Timely was true enough. But fiscally responsible? Not so much. Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he wanted New York to adopt a limit on greenhouse gas emissions that’s “the most aggressive goal in the country.” Unfortunately for New Yorkers, state lawmakers took him at his word. The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act now awaiting his signature vastly expands the state’s power to regulate every corner of New York’s economy in pursuit of lower emissions. Yet sponsors didn’t even bother to estimate its fiscal and economic impacts before rushing it through. Read More
Unemployment insurance programs are meant to help people who become jobless through no fault of their own. Nearly every state has disallowed benefits to employees who are on strike. But New York’s state Senate recently voted to let strikers get benefits one week after walking off the job—essentially putting them on equal footing with those who are laid off. Read More
By midnight Monday, more than 9 million New Yorkers will have filed their income tax returns for 2018. And most will then have cause to wonder what the Great New York SALT Panic of 2018 was all about. Read More
New York’s new budget — the actual state-government expenditure plan, that is, as opposed to numerous side issues packaged with it — apparently came in close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bottom line. Read More