A 2017 study by the Empire Center found liability costs in New York exceed $20 billion a year. If those costs were passed on to every household in the state — which really they are, in a way, because all affected organizations and insurers have to pass their costs on to their clients —- it would work out to be $2,700 annually. Read More
“Upstate would need to do a really significant reset of the way government is funded and what it spends, and upstate politicians have not exactly been clamoring for the reforms that it would take to make that happen,” said E.J. McMahon of the Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank. Read More
The new state budget features a larger-than-usual increase in Medicaid spending and two new coverage mandates for private insurers – adding to the already steep costs of health care for New York's taxpayers and policyholders. Read More
The governor and state Senate would dedicate the revenue for the MTA — but you can bet they’ll count it as their contribution to the agency. (And the Assembly just wants the tax to fund its overall huge boost in statewide spending.) It also means trouble for future MTA budgets, the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon warns, since real estate tax revenues are highly volatile. Read More
New York’s new budget — the actual state-government expenditure plan, that is, as opposed to numerous side issues packaged with it — apparently came in close to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s bottom line. Read More
With the Legislature getting ready to pass a budget for the fiscal year starting April 1, some fresh data and analysis emerging from the world outside Albany in the past week or so has raised new questions about the durability of the state's revenue base. Read More
With the clock ticking toward the April 1 start of the next state fiscal year, Assembly Democrats just laid out their budget preferences—and, as usual, they add up to a massive tax-and-spend fantasy. Read More
Under state law, the impasse means Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli will issue a revenue forecast on or before March 5. Legislators consistently push for higher numbers than the governor, but the current situation represents the first time in Mr. Cuomo’s three-term gubernatorial tenure that he and the Legislature have been unable to reach consensus. “It means they are getting off to a testy start, but it doesn’t mean they are doomed and they are not going to be able to do a budget,” said E.J. McMahon, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank. Read More