Testimony

The past year has taught a painful lesson about the importance of public health defenses, not just in terms of preventing sickness and death, but also preserving our economy and way of life. Read More

In economic terms, the coronavirus pandemic has been the most disruptive event to hit New York and the nation since the Great Depression in the early 1930s.  While New Yorkers hope to resume to some semblance of normal life by summer, the fiscal hangover for the state and its local governments will linger for years.  Read More

New York spends more per student on education than any state or country. According to the most recent national and international spending estimates, New York would retain that status even after cutting state funding to schools by 20 percent. Read More

As the harrowing past few months have made clear, New York was both unusually vulnerable to the coronavirus and dangerously underprepared to fight it. Read More

The 11 proposals, summarized in the table below, were submitted to Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team at a public comment forum on Friday at the Albany Capital Center. The Medicaid Redesign Team, appointed Feb. 4, is tasked with finding $2.5 billion in Medicaid savings to balance the state budget due April 1. Consistent with Cuomo’s guidelines, Hammond’s proposals would have no impact on current beneficiaries or local governments. Read More

The state’s current fiscal challenge is caused by excess spending, not insufficient taxes.  The governor’s projection of PIT receipts—which apparently have recovered from the post-tax reform disruption in the final quarter of fiscal 2019—assumes a steady continuing uptick in revenues across the next four years, despite the continuing phase-in of significant “middle class” income tax cuts through 2025.   But this could prove overly optimistic. Read More

The proposed increase in the Excelsior Scholarship income cap would build on a program that was fundamentally flawed, wasteful and unfair to begin with. Read More

The main thing wrong with Governor Cuomo’s Medicaid budget is that it barely exists. His executive budget proposes to reduce funding for the state’s biggest and most important program by 10 percent, or $2.5 billion, but omits any plan for making that happen. Instead, the governor is delegating details to a panel of industry insiders who haven’t yet been named and don’t have a clear deadline. Read More

If ever a piece of legislation warranted thorough vetting, in full public view, it’s a bill that would compel 20 million people to switch health plans, abolish tens of thousands of jobs, upend a sixth of the economy and levy the largest tax increase in the history of this or any other state. Read More

Governor Cuomo’s Executive Budget for fiscal year 2020 includes a short list of state revenue actions. By far the most significant tax proposal on the list would extend, for five years, the temporary added personal income tax (PIT) rate also known as the “millionaire tax.” Read More

Testimony of Bill Hammond, Health Policy Director, Empire Center for Public Policy, Before the Joint Legislative Fiscal Committees Read More

The past year has been a roller-coaster ride for New York’s health care system, as Congress tried repeatedly to scale back Medicaid and dismantle the Affordable Care Act while allowing other health-related programs to lapse. Because New York depends so heavily on federal health dollars, it had more to lose than almost any other state in all of those fights. Read More