Governor Hochul is hammering an “affordability” theme in the leadup to Tuesday's 2025 State of the State address. But her campaign, dubbed "Money In Your Pockets," has so far featured little that would reduce the cost of providing, and therefore buying, goods or services in New York. Instead, the biggest announced and expected elements reflect Albany's waning interest in growing the state economy—and a greater appetite to redistribute what it produces. Read More
Governor Hochul on Saturday signed an innocuous-sounding bill to “regulate the use of automated decision-making systems and artificial intelligence techniques by state agencies.” But the “Legislative Oversight of Automated Decision-making in Government,” or LOADinG Act, wasn’t about protecting New York from self-aware computers trying to wipe out humanity. Instead, it was an early Christmas present for the state's public employee unions—and a lump of coal for New Yorkers hoping for more efficient state government. Read More
A legislative hearing into spending by the state’s sprawling energy agency featured a surprise guest who offered sober warnings about Albany’s energy policy. Read More
Public employee unions complained loudly when New York's state government workforce shrank during the coronavirus pandemic, using that decrease as pretext to press Governor Hochul and state lawmakers for more hiring and costly giveaways to benefit their members. But the latest data show nearly every state agency has more employees than it did a year ago, and that by at least one key measure, the state workforce is larger than it was before COVID. Read More
A billion-dollar Medicare windfall for upstate hospitals has turned into a crisis for upstate health insurers that's threatening to disrupt coverage for millions of New Yorkers. Read More
Governor Hochul’s plan to mail $500 checks to millions of households has a problem: the sales tax “surplus” she wants to dish out doesn't exist. Read More
Forty-four percent of the state’s population, including 60 percent of New York City residents, were enrolled in state-sponsored coverage through Medicaid or the Essential Plan as of September 2024—but more than 3 million appear to have incomes above the programs' eligibility limits. Read More
Fans of ’s “Medicare at Home” proposal should study up on New York’s bloated home healthcare system, which covers about 850,000 people. Its large scale and rapid growth embody a Read More
Plans to build a milk-processing facility in Monroe County were announced last year to great fanfare but with few details on how such an energy-intensive operation could fit within Albany’s strict climate rules poised to hit homes and businesses. The answer: it won’t have to. Read More
The Hochul administration's proposed "MCO tax" would generate far less than the $4 billion in extra federal aid anticipated by state lawmakers when they approved the concept this spring, according to documents obtained Read More
Throughout the scandal over former Governor Andrew Cuomo's handling of Covid-19 in nursing homes, Cuomo and his administration repeatedly spread bad information – misstating how its policies had worked, understating Read More
Gov. Hochul’s overhaul of the reached a milestone last week when she named a Georgia-based company as the winning bidder to be the program’s statewide “fiscal intermediary” — and to replace that currently handle those duties. The Read More