Albany

BY BILL HAMMOND After second-guessing the FDA with its own vaccine task force, the Cuomo administration is declining to share even basic information about that panel’s approval process until mid-February. Replying to a Freedom of Information Law request from the

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,

Western New York’s leading legal mind — a civil rights lawyer who is widely considered to be among the top five or ten criminal defense attorneys in North America — and his exemplar legal sidekick are the architects of a

Sources familiar with Governor Andrew Cuomo‘s thinking explain to The Chronicle that — if he were to come out as ‘openly bisexual’ as many Albany politicos have been rumoring for weeks — it would be a more nuanced announcement.  “Italian-Americans don’t

State Senator Andrew Lanza is expected to introduce a bill early in the next legislative session to formally sever Staten Island’s ties to New York City — on everything from municipal services, schools, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA),

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 BILL HAMMOND The ongoing surge in New York’s coronavirus pandemic raises doubts about the effectiveness of Governor Cuomo’s “micro-cluster” strategy. Beginning Oct. 6, the governor has imposed tightened restrictions on limited areas, or clusters, identified as having particularly severe outbreaks –

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

Sources close to former Vice President Joe Biden are telling The Chronicle that he has tapped Governor Andrew Cuomo to serve as Secretary of State in his administration. We are told Cuomo has agreed to the appointment, which they hope

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 Governor Andrew Cuomo is again postponing pay raises for state employees—giving himself a little more budgetary breathing room without providing similar relief for local governments or school districts. According to the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), which

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