A year ago this week, with the start of the New York State's 2021 fiscal year just over a month away, it became unmistakably clear that the spread of the Wuhan, China, coronavirus was about to clobber the global economy, disrupt public finances and upend Governor Cuomo's original budget calculations. Read More
As Medicaid costs spiraled over the past decade, other parts of the state Health Department were losing money and staff—leaving New York with diminished public health resources when the pandemic struck last year. Read More
The admission of coronavirus-positive patients into New York nursing homes under March 25 guidance from the New York State Department of Health was associated with a statistically significant increase in resident deaths. Read More
New York State's tax receipts in January totaled $11.4 billion—outperforming Governor Cuomo's projections for the month by $1.7 billion, or 17 percent, according to the monthly cash report issued late today by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Read More
Although the state Health has recently revealed significant additional information about the pandemic death toll in New York's nursing homes, it has not fully complied with last week's court order in a Freedom of Information lawsuit brought by the Empire Center. Read More
The "state and local recovery" piece of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill now being drafted by House Democrats in Washington would not by itself give Governor Cuomo the $15 billion in added federal aid he's been loudly demanding—but would come very, very close. Read More
New York State's main pension fund investment pool earned 10 percent in its third quarter and has gained nearly 30 percent since the end of its 2020 fiscal year, according to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, the fund's sole trustee. As of Decemb Read More
The death toll in New York's long-term care facilities jumped by another 1,516 this weekend as the Cuomo administration adjusted its reporting on adult-care facilities to include residents who died after being transferred to hospitals. Read More
The state Health Department has revealed additional detail about coronavirus deaths in New York nursing homes, showing for the first time how many residents of each home died of COVID-19 outside of the facility, typically in a hospital. Read More
Numbers belatedly released by the Cuomo administration last week pushed New York's COVID-19 mortality rate in nursing homes from 35th to 13th highest in the U.S., an Empire Center analysis shows. Read More
In a letter to governors two days after President Biden's inauguration, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said that the pandemic-related federal public health emergency "will likely remain in place for the entirety of 2021." Read More
Governor Cuomo’s Executive Budget for fiscal year 2022 authorizes an enormous increase in state-supported debt, all in the form of non-voter-approved backdoor borrowing—and all of it pointedly excluded from the state's statutory debt cap. 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, 2021SIGN UP TO STAY UP TO DATE ON THIS AND THOSE OTHER ISSUES THAT IMPACT NEW YORKERS.