Research

New York residents will pay almost $90 billion in added taxes over the next two years if the federal government plunges over its fiscal “cliff” with no changes to current law, according to a timely report issued last week by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The scheduled tax changes outweigh the impact of scheduled “sequestration” cuts to federal spending, which would cost the state and local governments $5 billion over the next nine years, including a $600 million hit to the state budget in fiscal 2013. Read More

New York State has embarked on an ambitious multi-year effort to overhaul its taxpayer-funded Medicaid program, which has long combined high costs with less than impressive health outcomes. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “redesign” of Medicaid will be heavily focused on “complex, high-cost populations” – the roughly one million Medicaid recipients with long-term disabilities and chronic health problems such as diabetes, heart disease, substance abuse and mental illness. Read More

Don’t look now, but a quick deal to sidestep the federal government’s fiscal cliff could end up pushing New York state to the edge of its own precipice. Yet top New York officials seem oblivious to a wave of federal tax hikes due to hit the state’s tax base as soon as next month. Read More

Twenty-nine days past the legal deadline, the Cuomo Administration finally got around to posting the state’s required mid-year financial plan update on the Division of the Budget (DOB) website late yesterday afternoon. As expected, the report does not included an estimate of fiscal impacts from Superstorm Sandy. DOB says it is still working on those numbers. Read More

For a second straight year, Governor Andrew Cuomo has fallen behind the schedule for releasing the required quarterly update to the state financial plan. And for a second straight year, the governor can’t come up with a persuasive reason for the delay. Read More

New York operates the largest network of programs for the poor in the nation. It serves more than 5 million Medicaid clients at a cost of $54 billion annually. Read More

One year ago, as Andrew Cuomo was about to wrap up his first year in the New York governor's office, the governor and state legislative leaders agreed on a series of personal income tax provisions they described in a joint news release as "fair tax reform that achieves the first major restructuring of the tax code in decades." Read More

“Cash-strapped New York has tentatively chosen the highest bidder to produce driver’s licenses under a disputed contract that would provide only black-and-white photos and end up costing the state nearly $38 million more than the current contract if it’s approved,” the AP reports. Read More

The prices of some previously high-flying stocks such as Apple recently have been plummeting, and the stock market has just suffered “its worst week of declines in five months,” the Wall Street Journal reports. This is not good news for savers and investors — but it may be causing sighs of relief in some corners of the state Capitol. Read More

When welfare reform was enacted in 1996, creating the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant, a less-noticed provision was the greatly increased focus on collecting child support for custodial parents (almost always mothers) and their children. Read More

Sooner or later, New York will recover from the physical effects of this week’s super-storm, just as it did from the cataclysm of 9/11. Read More

The Food Stamp Program has changed its name to SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program -- an appropriate moniker, since in current economic conditions, states are making it a snap to qualify. Read More