The Empire Center’s Ken Girardin recently broke the news that the state last year generated slightly less electricity from renewable sources (wind, hydroelectric and solar) than it did in 2017. Read More
Tag: Andrew Cuomo
The heightened scrutiny of overtime at the MTA follows the release of a report by the Empire Center for Public Policy that revealed an unusually high rate of overtime collected by some employees, especially those at the Long Island Rail Road. Read More
Nine of the top 10 overtime earners at the MTA worked for the LIRR, documents obtained by the conservative think tank Empire Center for Public Policy show. Read More
The balance of unspent money in the Essential Plan Trust Fund ballooned to a new high of $1.2 billion as of March 31, records from the comptroller's office show. The surplus more than tripled since the same time last year – even as the Trump administration disrupted federal aid for the program, which provides health coverage to low-income New Yorkers, and the Cuomo administration diverted $635 million in Essential Plan funds to subsidize struggling hospitals. Read More
Kudos to the Empire Center for uncovering such outrages: It’s had to go to court time and again to force disclosure of pay and pension info for public employees across the state. Read More
The agency’s overall payroll grew by a whopping $418 million in 2018, according to a report published last month by the watchdog group Empire Center for Public Policy. Some LIRR workers made more than $300,000 a year in overtime alone. Read More
E.J. McMahon, founder of the fiscally conservative Empire Center think tank, said Cuomo has conflated the impact on the rich New Yorkers with how the federal tax reforms affected middle-class New Yorkers. For the most part, New Yorkers saw a decrease in taxes because of the federal changes, he said. Read More
The Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon similarly noted he has worn his belt through airport security “about a hundred times without taking it off or tripping anything,” but is still required to take it off while entering the Capitol. “It’s easy for people who want this, which is mainly people in government, to dismiss this as just carping over an inconvenience for people who don’t want to wait in line,” he said. “But it sends a very important and ultimately demeaning message to the public.” Read More