State Budget

BY BILL HAMMOND A pending change to New York’s Medicaid program known as the pharmacy “carve-out” is drawing opposition from a range of interests, including insurers, AIDS clinics and the health-care labor union 1199 SEIU. New Yorkers concerned about good

BY E.J. McMAHON New York State’s tax receipts in November were a whopping $800 million above Governor Andrew Cuomo’s projections for the month—further evidence that the current-year budget gap is probably much smaller than Cuomo has been claiming. Meanwhile, however,

Public officials are negotiating with unions in secret and ratifying far-reaching contracts without adequate public input, The Empire Center today warned in a new report, Dealing In The Dark: NY’s Secretive Government Labor Negotiations. “Union contracts control almost every government

BY E.J. McMAHON After rising sharply once the economy began to reopen, New York’s jobs recovery ominously appeared to run out of steam in October, according to the state’s monthly jobs report. The statewide private employment total for the month

BY CAM MacDONALD In light of the state government’s “extremely precarious financial position,” New York’s state lawmakers, judges, statewide elected officials and certain gubernatorial appointees should not receive pay raises in the next four years, a state commission says. “Granting

BY E.J. McMAHON After a weak 2018, personal income growth matched or exceeded national averages in most parts of New York State in 2019, according to the latest estimates from the federal Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA). The 2019 income rebound

BY E.J. McMAHON New York State’s unemployment rate has fallen sharply since the economically devastating pandemic lockdown last spring. But as state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli points out in his latest economic report, the jobless rate doesn’t tell the whole story.

BY E.J. McMAHON With the national election results still unclear, Governor Cuomo can no longer put off tough decisions on how to balance New York’s pandemic-ravaged state budget. Believing most national polls, Cuomo was banking on Joe Biden to win

BY E.J. McMAHON New York State’s tax receipts in the current fiscal year will exceed Governor Cuomo’s latest projections by $3.8 billion—still down from last year, but a big improvement over the governor’s worst-case scenario—according to updated estimates from state

BY MATT WEIDINGER Late Monday, House Democrats released an updated version of the “Heroes Act,” the massive $3.4 trillion coronavirus relief bill that passed the House mostly along partisan lines in May but has languished since then. The new 2154-page legislative text is billed as a

BY KEN GIRARDIN Yesterday’s indictment of New York’s top construction union official on federal corruption charges raises a big question: if private companies are paying bribes to avoid having to work with certain construction unions, why is Governor Andrew Cuomo insisting that

More than three-quarters of last year’s retirees from the City of New York’s Fire Department (FDNY) were eligible for six-figure pensions, with 40 of them eligible for pensions over $200,000 according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website.

BY KEN GIRARDIN Months of bad decisions and inaction by New York state officials have put school districts in the awkward position of having to give pay raises to most teachers while laying off others. The districts could have avoided

BY IAN KINGSBURY Governor Andrew Cuomo is withholding 20 percent of state school aid allocations pending federal bailout negotiations. The decision has been met with alarm and objection from district leaders and New York teachers unions. Yet notably absent from pleas to maintain funding

Most of the newest retirees eligible for pensions over $100,000 from the New York State and Local Retirement System were retired police officers, according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. At least 362 of the system’s 702 six-figure

BY E.J. McMAHON New York State’s biggest public pension fund lost money on its investments during the fiscal year that ended March 31—a completely unsurprising result, given the coronavirus crisis and its impact on financial markets in early spring. State

BY BILL HAMMOND New York’s per-capita Medicaid spending soared to more than double the nationwide rate in 2018, widening its gap with the other 49 states. New York’s version of Medicaid, a health plan for the low-income and disabled, cost

BY E.J. McMAHON New York City’s five municipal public pension funds ended their 2020 fiscal year with a net investment gain of 4.44 percent, well below their 7 percent assumed rate of return. That shortfall, reflecting the pandemic recession and