Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. Read More
Reports
This issue brief explores the financial considerations and policy challenges associated with eliminating the local Medicaid share and reviews the options for implementing a state takeover. Read More
Marking the Taylor Law's 50th anniversary, this paper reviews the background of the law and highlights provisions and precedents in need of state legislative reform. Read More
This report finds no evidence that ownership restrictions have produced a public benefit in terms of the quality, cost or accessibility of hospital care. Read More
Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 15 are presenting spending plans that would increase property taxes as high as the 2011 property tax cap law allows, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More
Benchmarking NY uses data from the state comptroller’s office to calculate effective tax rates–combined county, municipal and school taxes as a percent of market value–for thousands of localities across the state during 2017, excluding only New York City and Nassau County. Read More
Nearly two-thirds of New York State’s tax receipts are now generated by the personal income tax, or PIT. As a result, the state is very heavily reliant on highest-earning 1 percent of New York taxpayers—whose effective income tax rates have increased sharply under the new federal tax law capping state and local tax (SALT) deductions. Read More
This report explores recent trends in New York’s Medicaid drug spending, the forces behind them, and how they fit into the national context. Read More
Population totals barely budged in New York State between 2016 and 2017, according to the latest annual U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Read More
Reforms that would reduce the state’s cost burdens and improve its climate for growth. Read More
The state-mandated hourly compensation of construction workers on New York public works projects generally rose by double the 17 percent inflation rate over the past decade-but most of those added dollars did not boost workers' pay, according to "prevailing wage" schedules for major building trades. Read More
This report provides an overview of the current landscape of union representation, finances, lobbying and political activity in New York State. It concludes with recommendations designed to strengthen the rights of government workers and the oversight of union nances that are ultimately derived from taxpayer-funded salaries. Read More
"Readers will recall that the Empire Center is the think tank that spent months trying to pry Covid data out of Mr. Cuomo’s government, which offered a series of unbelievable excuses for its refusal to disclose...five months after it sued the government, and one week after a state court ruled that the Cuomo administration had violated the law and ordered it to come clean—Team Cuomo finally started coughing up some of the records." -Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2021
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