State Budget

(December 22, 2021) — Sources close to Governor Kathy Hochul say that she will include money in next year’s Thruway Authority budget to construct at least ten new exit interchanges on the Interstate 90, between the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts state

BY E.J. McMAHON New York’s employment recovery slowed to a near halt in the crucial month of September, falling further behind the national growth rate in the 18th full month since the pandemic hit in March 2020, according to state and federal

BY BILL HAMMOND Despite Governor Hochul’s promises of transparency, the state Health Department continues responding to requests for pandemic data with stalling tactics that became notorious during the Cuomo administration. In one striking example, the department recently responded to the

BY PETER WARREN A new dashboard posted yesterday on the Comptroller’s website could become the lens through which New Yorkers see how tens of billions of dollars in one-shot federal funding is being spent by governments at every level in the state.    Federal pandemic-induced

Nearly five billion dollars in pension payments were made in 2020 to more than 150,000 members of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System (NYCERS), according to new data posted today at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Among newly

A total of $87 million were steered to 174 new grants for local projects over the past ten months by the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York (DASNY), according to data the Empire Center recently received under a FOIL request. The

BY PETER WARREN After receiving an extraordinary infusion of federal emergency aid, local governments across every region of the state raked in robust sales tax collections during the three months that ended on June 30th, according to a report issued Friday

BY E.J. McMAHON New York’s spending on public elementary and secondary education reached $25,139 per pupil during the 2018-19 school year, once again surpassing all states in the latest U.S. Census annual data. The Empire State’s public schools spent 91 percent more than

BY PETER WARREN School budget votes proposing an average increase in per pupil spending of 4.2 percent were overwhelmingly approved in state-wide voting held yesterday, with all but five of 685 individual budget votes succeeding. New York’s tax cap law did flex

BY E.J. McMAHON Barely a year after Governor Cuomo declared the state was “broke” due to the pandemic, New York’s budget is bursting with cash—fueling enormous spending hikes, as shown in the financial plan update released today by Governor Cuomo’s Division

BY E.J. McMAHON The details apparently would get rancid if exposed to daylight, but Governor Cuomo and legislative leaders have announced the broad outlines of their budget deal for fiscal 2022, which began April 1. The final budget bills, including the all-important

BY E.J. McMAHON New York and its local governments will soon be showered with tens of billions of dollars in federal stimulus cash—and yet the new state budget will pump even more money into New York’s biggest capital pork-barrel slush fund.

Since Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan (ARP) was enacted in February, states have been busy designing ways to spend their share of the $350 billion in one-time federal “state and local aid” provided by that legislation. One of the most novel may be

The massive new infrastructure bill proposed by President Joe Biden makes more than two trillion dollars available to remake the American infrastructure system — and Western New York stands to be appropriated billions.  The federal government will fund 80% of

Buffalo businessman Patrick Whalen is being floated to lead the New York State Department of Transportation in the likely event that Lt. Governor Kathy Hochul will replace the increasingly embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo. Whalen is a longtime civic leader who

Sharp reductions in state funding for core public health functions over the past decade may have weakened New York’s defenses against the coronavirus pandemic, according to testimony delivered today by Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s senior fellow for health policy.

BY E.J. McMahon With less than a month to go before the April 1 start of New York State’s 2022 fiscal year, Governor Cuomo has been politically wounded by the allegations of bullying and sexual harassment now being investigated by

U.S. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, member of the Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, today announced the inclusion of more than $5.6 billion for public transportation agencies across New York state in the recently-passed government funding package. For