A trove of purloined emails detailing how Sony Pictures Entertainment executives poured money into Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign coffers after the state acted on a $26 million payout to the company has reignited criticism of New York's Film Tax Credit Program. Read More
The controversial nonprofit organization ACORN has been closed for almost five years, but that didn't stop the state Legislature from steering more than $24,000 its way in this year's budget. Read More
New York’s $142 billion budget, enacted on April 1, authorizes the state to spend $4,503 per second during its 2015-16 fiscal year, according to the Empire Center’s updated Spend-O-Meter. Read More
One of the best things about New York's newly adopted state budget for fiscal 2016 is something that's not in it (yet): a costly new state subsidy of homeowners' local property taxes. Governor Cuomo's Executive Budget proposal included an income tax credit (of the type also known as a "circuit breaker") that, when fully implemented by 2019, would funnel $1.7 billion a year to about half of the state's homeowners, plus renters. Read More
Government for sail? State lawmakers missed the boat on some ambitious reform proposals in the state budget — but they managed to enact a tax break for luxury-yacht buyers. Read More
How does a state find itself approving a tax exemption just for luxury yachts? Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's signature economic development program, Start-Up NY, has been slow to start up in the Syracuse area. Read More
E.J. McMahon, president of the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy think tank, said, "Only in Nassau would a cap with a supposed limitations produce payouts of $500,000. Almost any place else in the country, this would leave people flabbergasted and shaking their heads." Read More