During the first few years after Wall Street prices bottomed out in 2009, public-pension funds across the country reaped double-digit returns. They were riding a bull market pumped up by ultra-low interest rates, and it wouldn’t last. Now pension managers have been struggling to break even — the predictable outcome of a funding strategy that continues to expose taxpayers to unreasonable long-term risks. Read More
Call it pig in a blanket. Gov. Cuomo and state legislative leaders have brought pork back big-time, wrapped in a dense layer of bureaucracy and with a side of alphabet-soup misdirection. Read More
One of the key promises behind President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act is that it would "bend the curve" of increasing health care costs. The fact that the nation's overall health spending has been growing at the relatively slow rate of 4 percent annually is a hopeful sign. But all is not so calm in the part of the insurance industry most directly affected by the ACA — the individual and small-group markets. Read More
Seven years since the end of the Great Recession, and five years since Andrew Cuomo took office as governor, New York state’s economy is in splendid shape. That’s what the state’s ubiquitous “Open for Business” ad campaign would imply, at any rate. The facts tell a different story. Read More
From Albany to Buffalo, the New York governor’s clubby approach to economic development invites—and deserves—scrutiny. Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has promised — loudly, proudly and publicly — that New York state will overspend on public works projects. Read More
New York under Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been able to tame Medicaid costs by bringing together service providers and health care unions to find ways to save money. But Medicaid patients themselves can also play a bigger role in that process. Read More
New York's new state budget includes the biggest permanent "middle class" income tax cut in 20 years. Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature can pay for it by restraining spending and enacting more tax reform. Read More