#NYCoronavirus: New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) has a $1 trillion list of federal stimulus funding proposals—with specifics that illustrate both the union’s thirst for taxpayer money and its desire to influence public policy well beyond the classroom walls. Read More
A 2019 New York Post editorial, “Pensions New York Taxpayers Can’t Afford,” with data from the Empire Center named a retired lawyer for the city’s department of housing preservation and development who qualified for a $434,263 city pension, and three other city retirees earning pensions of more than $300,000 a year. One New York City police officer was collecting a $474,511 a year pension. Illinois is no better. Read More
Empire Center fiscal expert E.J. McMahon is warning that the local economic outlook is “the grimmest on record,” thanks to the pandemic — yet you’d barely know it from the budget Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled Thursday. to $97.4 billion t Read More
With the coronavirus pandemic hitting some parts of New York much harder than others, Governor Cuomo has signaled that he will begin to relax shutdown restrictions in low-virus parts of the state. Here's a closer look at how infection and fatality rates vary from region to region. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: While Governor Cuomo continues to press for a bigger all-purpose federal bailout of the coronavirus-clobbered state budget, New York State already has reaped $5.5 billion in added federal aid from two emergency stimulus bills enacted by Congress last month, according to a report issued today by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office. Read More
With the coronavirus lockdown continuing to erode tax revenues, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has turned up the volume on his demands for a federal bailout of the New York state budget. In a weekend briefing, the governor repeated his estimate that the Empire State will need help closing a deficit of $10 billion to $15 billion. “I don’t have any funding to do what I normally do,” he said. Read More
In case it wasn’t obvious from the headlines and body count, New York is currently suffering more severely from the coronavirus epidemic than almost anywhere else. Read More
#NYcoronavirus: The outlook for New York's economy is the grimmest on record, according to the first post-pandemic lockdown round of credible economic surveys and forecasts. Start with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose regional economists today issued a notably pessimistic report based on their monthly Empire State Manufacturing Survey and a broader Business Leaders Survey that take sin the northern New Jersey and metropolitan New York. Read More