When New York's current state budget was enacted, Governor Andrew Cuomo hailed it as "the broadest and most sweeping" of his tenure, adding that "for the ninth straight year it was both timely and fiscally responsible." "Timely," yes: budget bills were passed by the Legislature just in time for the April 1 dawn of a new fiscal year. As for "fiscally responsible"—well, that's more a matter of opinion. Read More
The Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act on its way to enactment in Albany would vastly expand the state government’s power to regulate every corner of New York’s economy in pursuit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Yet even as it addresses what proponents describe as a “climate emergency,” the bill’s most controversial elements have been postponed until after the 2022 elections. Read More
All together, these and a few other adjustments results in total spending increasing by $4.7 billion for this year, according to the Empire Center. Read More
An Empire Center analysis of the latest Census numbers also showed that New York’s educational expenditures are primarily driven by teacher salaries and benefits that are 117 percent above the national average on a per-student basis. Read More
Schools, excluding the Big 5 districts of Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Yonkers and New York City, are proposing to increase taxes by $539 million despite an enrollment drop of 7,827 students, or a 0.5% decline, the Empire Center for State Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank said. Read More
New York's spending on elementary and secondary education reached a record $23,091 per pupil in 2017, once again topping all other states in this category, according to the latest U.S. Census data. Read More
But E.J. McMahon, research director for the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy, says the revenue and economic outlook for the fiscal year is “pretty optimistic” for a governor “who hasn’t stopped predicting we’re doomed as a result of the SALT cap.” Read More
E.J. McMahon, who served as a deputy tax commissioner in the administration of former Gov. George Pataki and now is the research director for the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany think tank, said STAR has always been about fiscal gimmickry and is going further in that direction. “It would have been a better idea to simply freeze the STAR benefit rather than sneakily convert it into a credit,” he said. Read More