Category: Reports

Faced with a $2.5 billion deficit in the Medicaid budget, Governor Andrew Cuomo has floated the idea of closing the gap in part with “additional industry revenue.” This raises concern that lawmakers will again hike New York’s already heavy taxes on health insurance – and deepen the state’s addiction to an unhealthy source of revenue. Read More

Staff salaries are the dominant category of spending in public school budgets across the state. And the largest item within that category is teacher salaries, which consistently rank among the highest in the country. Read More

New York has lost nearly 1.4 million residents to the rest of the country since 2010—and largely as a result of this outflow, the Empire State’s total population barely budged during the decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest annual update of population estimates. Read More

Residents of the Mid-Hudson village of Liberty had the highest effective property tax rate in New York (outside New York City and Nassau) during fiscal year 2019, according to the newest edition of Benchmarking NY, the Empire Center’s annual examination of local property taxes. Read More

New York State residents pay some of the highest local taxes in the nation. To help New Yorkers compare some of the basic fiscal measures for local governments, the Empire Center for Public Policy continues to calculate effective property tax rates and per-capita values for the spending, debt and tax levels of counties, cities, towns, villages and school districts throughout the state, excluding only New York City. Read More