Research

There are plenty of reasons for New Yorkers to be leery of the House Republican health plan, but Governor Andrew Cuomo’s gestures of resistance on Monday raise several objections Read More

New York State's fiscal outlook appears to have deteriorated in the past three months, based on an initial review of the financial plan update released late today by Governor Cuomo's Division of the Budget (DOB). Read More

Thanks to New York’s unusual insurance laws, the impact of the House GOP health plan on the state’s non-group insurance market would be dramatically different than than virtually anywhere else. Read More

The growth of Obamacare-related health coverage in New York slowed to 3 percent over the past year, as surging enrollment in the Essential Plan and Child Health Plus was offset by declining signups for commercial plans and Medicaid. Read More

Legislation introduced by the politically potent state Senate Independent Democratic Conference (IDC) with Republican support would scrap a decades-old worker protection and make it more difficult for government employees to change their mind about paying dues to a labor union. Read More

Albany Democrats never got the memo that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. They’re peddling a universal health-care plan they claim would not only cost nothing more, but leave the state $45 billion richer. The plan might as well be signed by a Nigerian prince. Read More

The tax cap effect was on full display in yesterday’s school budget voting. School budgets were approved at a record-high rate of 99.3 percent, adding to evidence that districts can live within a property tax cap set at either 2 percent or the prior year’s average rate of inflation, whichever is less. Read More

The House GOP is a model of cautious deliberation next to the Assembly’s handling of the New York Health Act, which would establish a statewide single-payer plan. Read More

The Cuomo administration has proposed modifications to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), which has long hindered growth and development in New York State. While the changes under consideration by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) would represent at least one important step in a pro-growth direction, the proposed tweaks to SEQR would also clear a smoother path for key Cuomo priorities, such as the development of vast solar panel farms and wind turbine installations required by the governor’s renewable energy push. And in some other respects, the proposed SEQR changes would create even more development red tape. Read More

What would happen to New York’s popular Essential Plan under the House Republican health bill? The answer, like so much in health policy, turns out to be more complicated than previously understood. Read More

New York had one of the nation's slowest-growing state economies last year, according to the latest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimates from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Read More

Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 16 are presenting spending plans that call for increasing 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