In the resulting rush to get out of town, Assembly and Senate leaders gave Gov. Andrew Cuomo wide latitude to essentially proceed however he saw fit, leading to a state budge process that E.J. McMahon, research director for the good-government group Empire Center, called as secretive "as I've ever seen in 30 or 40 years." Read More
#NYCoronavirus: It's increasingly apparent that New York is suffering more severely from the coronavirus pandemic than any other part of the U.S. and most of the rest of the world – raising stark questions for city and state leaders. What is it about New York, and especially New York City, that made it especially vulnerable to infection and death? And how can that be changed before the next virus breaks loose? Read More
#NYCoronavirus: Governor Cuomo is invoking his "emergency" powers to unilaterally defer a 2 percent pay hike otherwise scheduled for most unionized state government workers during the new fiscal year. Read More
“It’s made up on the fly,” said the Empire Center think tank's E.J. McMahon, who has spent decades analyzing state budgets. “It really sounds contrived … They can’t possibly spend what Cuomo proposed unless they get a federal bailout,” he said. “The tactic is that this budget is balanced as long as the federal government gives them $10 billion. What?” Read More
The budget authorizes borrowing an extra $11 billion to help cover the state's costs and lost revenues, including $8 billion to account for the state and federal government pushing its income-tax filing deadline from April to July, according to the Empire Center, an Albany-based think tank. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: Downstate New Yorkers are three times more likely than upstaters to have been tested for Covid-19 – and four times more likely to have been positive when checked. Read More
#NYCoronavirus: The coronavirus pandemic has been an acid test for government, revealing bureaucratic incompetencies, unnecessary regulations—and, in Albany, an agency that has failed to perform one of its central functions. Read More
"My prediction for now is this is going to be the most severe and prolonged fiscal crisis New York state and its local governments have seen, really since the Great Depression when government did not operate at the scale it now operates," Empire Center Research Director E.J. McMahon said. Read More