Recent amendments to the House Republican health plan, which is heading to a potential vote this week, have done little to improve it from New York’s point of view. Read More
Research
Wednesday, Mayor de Blasio presented a fiscal 2018 Executive Budget that called for pension contributions totaling $9.6 billion — another all-time high. Yet city pension plans remain significantly underfunded even by lenient government accounting standards, posing a big risk to New York’s fiscal future. Read More
With a line-item veto last week, Governor Cuomo put a last nail in the coffin of a good idea that was never given a chance by Albany: analyzing the costs and benefits of health insurance mandates before passing them into law. Read More
From a New York perspective, the proposed repeal of itemized deductions for state and local tax payments was the (expected) headline item in the rough outline of a tax reform presented in Washington today by Trump administration officials. Read More
New York state, its local governments and public authorities are committed to spending tens of billions of dollars on public works in the next five to 10 years. But under current law, they’re also committed to wasting billions of taxpayer dollars on public works — to subsidize the above-market compensation of the state’s shrinking but politically influential construction unions. Read More
A new report card from the Leapfrog Group, a healthcare watchdog, paints an unflattering picture of safety in New York’s hospitals. Read More
New York’s Costly Public Works Pay Mandate Read More
New York is planning to demur from some of the Trump administration’s rule changes for Obamacare, including its much shorter enrollment window. Read More
From the moment of its unveiling at the start of the year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “free” college tuition plan seemed to have been hastily reverse-engineered from a campaign slogan — a Bernie Sanders presidential campaign slogan, that is. The governor did nothing to dispel that impression when he invited the Vermont senator to deliver an endorsement of the plan when it was first rolled out at a Queens College rally on Jan. 3. Read More
The new state budget’s allocation of $500 million in capital funding for healthcare providers – the fifth such infusion in four years – comes with a notable lack of procedural controls or clarity of purpose. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo's "free" tuition plan bore all the earmarks of having been hastily reverse-engineered from a campaign slogan—a Bernie Sanders presidential campaign slogan, that is. Indeed, the governor didn't try hard to dispel that impression, inviting the Vermont senator himself to deliver a endorsement of the plan when it was first rolled out at a Queens College rally on Jan. 3. Read More
The positives in New York's FY2018 budget make up a pretty short list—while the negatives are in some respects worse than usual. A quick and superficial initial rundown follows. Read More