So you have to wonder: Is now the time to be looking at rebates on tolls – rebates that will average just $97 a motorist – when the state still has no plan in place to fully pay for the $3.98 billion replacement of the Tappan Zee Bridge in the lower Hudson Valley? Read More
Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, argued that municipalities already have every incentive to streamline services and that little would be gained by "throwing more money at them" to do so. He also contended that unfunded state mandates are more to blame for high property taxes than the fact that New York has about 1,600 towns, villages, cities and counties. Read More
Gov. Cuomo is the state’s top officer but he’s far from being the government’s highest paid employee, according to a new report. Data released Friday by the Empire Center for Public Policy showed that 1,797 state employees earned more in 2015 than the $179,000 salary Cuomo earned as governor. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposal to spend $340 million in budget windfall cash on a temporary state tax rebate of Thruway tolls is “an indefensible gimmick,” E.J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center, testified today at a Joint Legislative Budget Hearing in Albany. Read More
Lawmakers should reject the Thruway toll gimmicks in the budget, and should repair the 'cliff' in the state's estate tax, Empire Center president E.J. McMahon testified. Read More
“You do have to take this capital plan with a grain of salt,” said EJ McMahon, with the fiscally conservative Empire Center. McMahon predicted the projects, “. . . will happen in a different way and on a different schedule than the governor may have implied.” Read More
Without a hint of irony, Mr. Cuomo proudly compared his “development initiative” to the almost-forgotten titan of government spending, Nelson Rockefeller. Mr. Cuomo bragged that it “would make Gov. Rockefeller jealous.” Read More
In his combined State of the State and budget message last week, Gov. Cuomo officially unveiled $100 billion in “transformative" infrastructure projects — enough to “make Governor [Nelson] Rockefeller jealous.” That wouldn’t be easy, even if it were desirable. To finance a 15-year building binge that included most of the State University system — not to mention countless other capital projects capped by Albany’s monstrously modernist Empire State Plaza — New York’s legendary Republican governor from 1959 to 1973 quintupled state debt. Cuomo clearly hopes his plans will be perceived as Rockefeller-esque in scope. So how does he plan to pay for it all? The answer: for the most part, he doesn’t. Read More