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
This year marks the 90th anniversary of New York State’s first Executive Budget, presented by Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1929. Constitutional amendments establishing the Executive Budget process had been approved by New York voters in November 1927, capping a more than decade-long bipartisan effort to bring order to what had been a shambolic and fiscally profligate legislative budget process. Read More
NY has lost a net 1.4 million people to other states in the 2010s. Where are they going, and what are they earning in their new home states? Based on the latest IRS data, our rollover map offers some answers. Read More
New York has lost nearly 1.4 million residents to the rest of the country since 2010—and largely as a result of this outflow, the Empire State’s total population barely budged during the decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest annual update of population estimates. Read More
Residents of the Mid-Hudson village of Liberty had the highest effective property tax rate in New York (outside New York City and Nassau) during fiscal year 2019, according to the newest edition of Benchmarking NY, the Empire Center’s annual examination of local property taxes. Read More
New York State residents pay some of the highest local taxes in the nation. To help New Yorkers compare some of the basic fiscal measures for local governments, the Empire Center for Public Policy continues to calculate effective property tax rates and per-capita values for the spending, debt and tax levels of counties, cities, towns, villages and school districts throughout the state, excluding only New York City. Read More
NY's Excelsior Scholarship program is regressive and wasteful Read More
The budget crisis in New York’s Medicaid program stems from the failure of a key cost-control measure adopted during Governor Cuomo’s first term. In 2011, Cuomo and the Legislature imposed a “global cap” on state Medicaid spending that was tied to the medical inflation rate. The measure showed signs of working at first, but lost its effectiveness as circumstances changed, loopholes multiplied and compliance faltered. Read More