Research

Upstate electricity customers today got what seemed like good news when Equinor pulled the plug on its Empire Wind 2 (EW2) offshore wind project, one of several being funded by New York customers as far away as Buffalo and Plattsburgh. The announcement however is mainly theater, because Equinor looks poised to squeeze even more money from ratepayers—in a manner that should have state lawmakers deeply concerned about how little control they’ve retained over state renewable energy spending. Read More

Long-delayed data showing outcomes from New York’s 2023 state assessment tests—taken by students in grades 3 to 8 in June—were finally released last week. It marks the second year in a row that state education officials have failed to release t Read More

New York's population decreased by 101,984 residents—the largest loss of any state—during the 12-month period that ended last July 1, according to The Empire State's population as of mid-2023 was pegged at 19,571,216, a cumulative decline of 631 Read More

Governor Hochul will soon sign or veto a bill designed to gut the ability of school superintendents, mayors and other local officials to discipline public employees. Read More

The state's health-care workforce is recovering unevenly from the pandemic, with persistently lower employment levels in some areas and robust growth in others. This mixed patt Read More

A declaring "no statistically significant evidence of tax migration in New York" and finding "high earners’ migration rates returned to pre-Covid levels" during 2022 has a glaring problem: It relies heavily on an almost microscopic sample size of Read More

Thanks to an absurdly wasteful federal law, New York's Essential Plan is expected to continue running billion-dollar surpluses even as state officials more than double its spending over the next several years. Read More

A Washington Post analysis of homeschooling trends revealed that families in New York have flocked to home education at rates Read More

State education officials are refusing to release the results of federally required assessments in grades 3 through 8, deliberately keeping parents and taxpayers in the dark—not only about how New York’s public schools performed, but also about how that performance was measured. Read More

As Governor Hochul calls for spending restraint next year, influential hospital lobbyists are pushing what could be the costliest budget request ever floated in Albany. In a , Read More

Most school board members in New York's largest school districts were elected with teachers' union support and many are themselves teachers' union members. Read More

Months after lowering the scores to pass state assessment exams, New York education officials are considering eliminating the Regents diploma. Read More