Gov. Andrew Cuomo's guest commentary on his proposed minimum wage increase was filled with the sort of misinformation and half-truths that have propelled the "fight for $15" for months now. Read More
Research
Statewide private sector employment in New York as of December was up just 1 percent over the same month a year earlier—less than half the national rate, and the lowest such growth rate in New York since the end of the recession in 2009, according to revised employment data released last week by the state Labor Department (DOL). The total year-to-year gain of just 76,500 private jobs was less than half the average recorded in each of the four previous Decembers since Governor Andrew Cuomo took office. Read More
In his push for a statewide $15-an-hour minimum wage, Governor Andrew Cuomo frequently invokes fairness, justice and the rhetoric of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the pre-FDR Progressive Era advocates of the minimum wage had a worldview that today would fit in best at a Donald Trump rally. Read More
New York’s Legislature has been exempt from many provisions of the state Freedom of Information Law since FOIL was first enacted in 1974. The Assembly and Senate ultimately decide how much legislative information to make public. This makes about as much sense as putting Cookie Monster in charge of security at the Chips Ahoy factory. As a result, a lot of information on legislative matters ranging from individual employee timesheets to a billion-dollar slush fund has been concealed from taxpayers. But if Governor Cuomo has his way, that could soon change. Read More
New York has seldom seen an executive initiative as politically radical or economically reckless as Gov. Cuomo’s proposal for a $15-per-hour statewide minimum wage. Read More
Gov. Andrew Cuomo's campaign for a statewide $15-an-hour minimum wage is based on the assertion that "no one who works a full-time job should be forced to live in poverty." Few would disagree. But here's the thing: No one who works a full-time job in New York has to live in poverty — thanks largely to a program pioneered at the state level by the governor's father. Read More
Before leaving Albany for the Legislature's Presidents' Week recess, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie tweeted up a storm in support of a new soak-the-rich tax hike proposal backed by most of his fellow Assembly Democrats. In the process, he trotted out some familiar myths and misleadingly incomplete data to support the claim that wealthy New Yorkers don't pay their "fair share" of state income taxes. Read More
The poverty-fighting effectiveness of the state and federal Earned Income Tax Credit in New York is the focus of “Making Work Pay,” a new Issue Brief from the Empire Center for Public Policy. In light of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s push for a $15-an-hour statewide minimum wage, the briefing paper explains how the EITC already serves to boost low wages to levels well above the poverty line. Read More
For the third time in as many years, a state Senate committee has approved and sent to the Senate floor a bill that would lock in tens of billions of dollars worth of unfunded retirement health insurance coverage promised to New York government employees. The bill in question, sponsored by Republican Sen. Andrew Lanza of Staten Island, is designed to prevent state and local government employers from even attempting to restructure other post-employment benefits (OPEB) without first bargaining such changes with public employee unions. Read More
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has officially confirmed what federal inflation statistics were already telegraphing: New York's statutory cap on local school property tax levies will be just a hair above zero for 2016-17 school year budgets, which will be submitted for voter approval in May. Read More
In his combined State of the State and budget message last week, Gov. Cuomo officially unveiled $100 billion in “transformative" infrastructure projects — enough to “make Governor [Nelson] Rockefeller jealous.” That wouldn’t be easy, even if it were desirable. To finance a 15-year building binge that included most of the State University system — not to mention countless other capital projects capped by Albany’s monstrously modernist Empire State Plaza — New York’s legendary Republican governor from 1959 to 1973 quintupled state debt. Cuomo clearly hopes his plans will be perceived as Rockefeller-esque in scope. So how does he plan to pay for it all? The answer: for the most part, he doesn’t. Read More
So, how is Governor Andrew Cuomo paying for that $100 billion infrastructure "development initiative" that, as he put in his State of the State message yesterday, "would make Governor Rockefeller jealous"? The answer: for the most part, he actually isn't. Read More