Reports

The disruptions to K-12 education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic spurred Governor Cuomo to announce an initiative to “reimagine education.” This challenge should have policymakers asking what inadequacies have been exposed in our public education system, and which newly adopted practices should be permanent. Amidst a projected multi-year fiscal crisis, New York public schools should expect education spending cuts and should make plans to implement reforms without sacrificing quality. Read More

New York’s largest teachers union this summer threatened to go on strike rather than allow schools to reopen for in-person classes—despite months of preparation by officials and a state law that prohibits union work stoppages. Read More

The rules governing public employment in New York are expressly designed to make it time-consuming and expensive to hold workers accountable for poor performance or misconduct. Read More

Empire Center's E.J. McMahon talks with Bill Hammond about New York's nursing home polices throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Read More

New York school districts are seeking voter approval of budgets that would raise their per-pupil spending by an average of more than four times the projected inflation rate. Most districts have proposed property tax hikes as high as the maximum allowed without supermajority overrides under the tax cap law. Read More

The final set of pre-pandemic U.S. Census population data for cities, towns and villages provides localized details on a familiar New York pattern: widespread decline upstate, and a few small pockets of growth amid the general stagnation downstate. Read More

Looking ahead, state officials must begin now to take seven essential steps for promoting the recovery and renewal of New York’s economy. Read More

The Cuomo administration has gotten around to sharing detailed estimates of the pandemic's impact on the state budget enacted almost a month ago—but the latest update from the Division of the Budget (DOB) raises about as many questions as it answers. Read More

New York has just enacted a pandemic-crisis budget that might as well have been written in disappearing ink—shakily “balanced” on hopes of a huge federal bailout and ultimately backstopped by the potential for unprecedented deficit borrowing. Read More

For a second consecutive year, New York’s population loss was mainly concentrated downstate, according to the latest Census Bureau estimates. Read More

Faced with a $2.5 billion deficit in the Medicaid budget, Governor Andrew Cuomo has floated the idea of closing the gap in part with “additional industry revenue.” This raises concern that lawmakers will again hike New York’s already heavy taxes on health insurance – and deepen the state’s addiction to an unhealthy source of revenue. Read More

Staff salaries are the dominant category of spending in public school budgets across the state. And the largest item within that category is teacher salaries, which consistently rank among the highest in the country. Read More