The New York State Energy Planning Board reconvened yesterday to kick off a new round of energy planning. And it violated the state's Open Meetings Law before the gavel fell. Read More
Research
State Health Department documents from June 2020, newly unearthed by congressional investigators, appear to show harmful effects from a controversial order requiring nursing homes to admit Covid-positive patients. Read More
It’s a pity New York cannot power its economy on hubris, but state officials this week gave it a try. Read More
Governor Hochul and state lawmakers this year approved a costly giveaway for public employee unions that retroactively hiked pension benefits. Now the bill is arriving. Read More
Former Governor Andrew Cuomo and his political critics have something in common: They're both trying to drag Minnesota Governor Tim Walz into Cuomo's nursing home scandal. Cuomo’s attempt to hide behind Wal Read More
The start of a new school year finds New York’s public education system in a well-funded state of confusion and contradiction: flush with cash amid falling test scores and declining enrollment, spending more than ever as state-level bureaucrats plan to weaken graduation standards—but still can’t tell parents how their students performed in last spring’s assessments. Read More
So much for “no means no.” That’s the message from the state Court of Appeals, which ruled last week that New Yorkers don’t need an excuse to cast an absentee ballot by mail when they’re otherwise able to vote in person — even though the voters themselves have directly rejected such a measure. Read More
Approaching the fifth Labor Day weekend since the COVID-19 outbreak of 2020, most regions of New York have yet to recover the private-sector jobs lost in the wake of pandemic lockdowns—and the Empire State trails far be Read More
For the fourth time in six years, the president of New York's largest health-care union, George Gresham of 1199SEIU, has won the top spot on the "Labor Power 100" list from Cit Read More
The authors of a report on New York's pandemic response are barred from discussing their findings with media under a provision of their contract with Governor Hochul's office, records obtained by the Empire Center conf Read More
Well-founded or not, a majority of New Yorkers who voted in 2021 had misgivings on the merits of no-excuse absentee voting. They rejected the same scheme the Early Mail Voting Law now imposes. They voted to maintain the status quo of the prior 55 years and their will should prevail because the Early Mail Voting Act is unconstitutional as a matter of legal interpretation and the history and tradition in New York's Constitution. Read More
New Yorkers will to vote this November on Ballot Proposal 1—a proposition to amend equal protection clause of the state Constitution. If approved by the voters in November, Prop One’s changes to the state’s equal protection laws could throw New York civil rights into turmoil. Read More