Eighty-five percent of the websites for New York’s 500 largest counties, municipalities and school districts failed to earn a passing grade in the Empire Center’s first annual SeeThroughNY Website Report Card Read More
Category: Reports
The Empire State recently has fallen behind the national average when it comes to adding new income millionaires. Read More
Massive but partially hidden funding shortfalls are a feature, not a bug, of New York City's public pension system and its counterparts across the country. Read More
Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2013-14 edition of What They Make, the Empire Center's annual report on public payrolls, allows New York taxpayers to compare this key element of local government costs around the state... Read More
A new state budget provision would provide property tax rebates to homeowners in localities where local governments reduce costs and maintain services through shared services. Read More
New York is one of only 14 states that still impose an estate tax. The new state budget moves a big step towards repeal—but more needs to be done to avoid chasing away wealth. Read More
A challenging fiscal environment and notoriously high property taxes have raised structural and service issues to new levels as communities explore the potential efficiencies to be gained through shared services, dissolution and consolidation. Read More
The full extent of the continuing rise in school spending since the recession was not inevitable or unavoidable. It was the result of (a) increasing teacher compensation costs driven largely by automatic pay raises, and (b) continued relatively high levels of staffing, relative to enrollment, especially in non-teaching titles. Read More