Rebounding from its biggest loss since the Global Financial Crisis, New York's Common Retirement Fund realized a strong investment gain of 11.55 percent in fiscal year 2024, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced. The Fund, which now stands just below $268 billion, supports pensions paid to members of the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS). Read More
This is the month when New Yorkers are due to finally receive an official report on the state's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the deadliest disasters in state history. Read More
Governor Hochul is taking heat after postponing the state’s years-old plan to charge drivers to enter lower Manhattan. As critics slam her for lacking “political courage,” it’s an appropriate time to examine some of the underlying issues that congestion pricing was meant to indirectly mitigate—because many if not most advocates were afraid to touch those issues themselves. And if congestion pricing proponents are to be taken at their word about their concern for MTA finances, or traffic, or air quality, they must show some of the same courage they’ve accused the governor of lacking. Read More
New York state lawmakers in recent years have surrendered some of their policymaking and taxing powers to the executive branch. With the 2024 legislative session coming to close, they’re poised to go even further and turn those powers over to an organization outside of government entirely. Read More
A plan to require a $10.18 "dispensing fee" for filling drug prescriptions is back on the table in Albany – this time in the form of legislation rather than regulation. The Read More
Bills designed to block any change to retiree health coverage for state and local public employees have been introduced repeatedly by legislators in both parties over the past 30 years. But the latest statewide “anti-diminution” measure, inspired by an ongoing controversy in New York City, would be the broadest and most costly yet—and more than two-thirds of state lawmakers are supporting it. Read More
A money-saving maneuver in the newly enacted Medicaid budget could end up increasing costs in the long term – by paving the way for more unionization of the state's burgeoning home health workforce. Read More
Filling in more details of New York's ongoing demographic decline, the Census Bureau has just released updated local population estimates showing that 80 percent of the state's towns and cities have lost residents since 2020. In addition to New Yo Read More
School districts presenting budgets to voters next Tuesday plan to spend an average of $33,404 per student, up 4.4 percent from the current school year, according to new state data. Read More
After rising sharply with an extra push from the inflation surge of 2022, sales tax receipts in New York grew much more slowly during the first four months of this year, according to from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office. Statewide sale Read More
The rule of law scored a victory yesterday when a proposition to amend the equal rights provision of the state Constitution got knocked off this fall’s general election ballot. Read More
The cancellation of planned offshore wind projects has sparked considerable heartburn and hand-wringing among lawmakers, activists and politically wired businesses and unions, but it’s been good news for the upstate families and businesses who would be paying more than half the cost. For them, each year of delays on scotched projects amounts to future electric-bill savings of upwards of $1 billion—and gives Albany another chance to find a better, less expensive way to go green. Read More