Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 15 are presenting spending plans that would increase property taxes as high as the 2011 property tax cap law allows, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
Last week we slammed the new state budget as an exercise in financial recklessness. But the bad news is still rolling in. Read More
Over the weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York's Legislatureagreed on a $168.3 billion budget for the 2019 fiscal year. Before Albany moves on to the next thing - which could be nothing in an election year - let's revisit what it just did and what it means. Read More
State residents who pay close attention to how Albany operates should be familiar by now with the names of the elected officials who decide how their money gets spent. But if they really want to understand, they should get to know SAM. Read More
Count New York’s government-employee unions among the biggest winners of this year’s budget battle — with taxpayers as the big losers. In the dead of night, the Legislature adopted language that aims to protect public unions’ political power from a likely US Supreme Court ruling. Read More
The Empire Center, a government watchdog group in Albany, calls it the “biggest, murkiest, pork-barrel slush fund Albany (and perhaps any state capital) has ever seen.” The allocation is slipped into the state budget without any explanation from legislative leaders and the governor. Read More
Now that the state budget is put to bed for another year, here is a non-comprehensive rundown of health care-related highlights and lowlights. Read More
Governor Cuomo’s proposal to expropriate “excess” reserves from Medicaid managed care plans would apparently target just two insurers—Fidelis Care and MetroPlus—even though their reserve levels are not unusually high. Read More