The Buffalo Chronicle
Empire Center
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Empire Center recognized for exposing nursing home coverup
In recognition of the importance of government transparency, the Empire Center has been selected as a finalist for the 2021 Bob Williams Award for Most Influential Research for its role in exposing the coverup…
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Only three of 62 requested COVID data sets made available through FOIL
Just three COVID data sets have been made fully available in the month since the Empire Center officially submitted a total of 62 Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests for coronavirus-related records from…
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Sales tax receipts surge statewide, filling local government coffers
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…
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WARREN: Opportunity in the American Rescue Plan
BY PETER WARREN Some New York local governments are soliciting input from residents as they decide how to spend billions in pandemic emergency dollars earmarked in March under the $2.1 trillion federal American…
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In Albany’s heaviest-spending year ever, lawmakers approve more pork
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…
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Job recovery picks up steam in New York, but still far behind rest of U.S.
BY E.J. McMAHON New York’s private-sector job recovery accelerated in March—but remained far behind the national pace on a year-to-year basis, according to the latest monthly figures from the state Labor Department.…
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HAMMOND: COVID mortality patterns must inform nursing home regulation in New York
BY BILL HAMMOND A closer look at newly released data about coronavirus in New York nursing homes raises questions about what factors contributed to high infection and mortality rates—and what reforms should…
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Amid Cuomo’s fulminations, New York’s budget gap keeps shrinking
BY E.J. McMAHON State tax receipts in the month of December came in $1.4 billion above the latest projection by Governor Cuomo’s Division of the Budget (DOB), according to a cash report…
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Seeking bigger federal handout, Cuomo proposes record budget
BY E.J. McMAHON Somewhere within that vast fog bank of a FY 2022 Executive Budget that Governor Cuomo began to roll out today is a structural budget gap, opened during the pandemic recession and…
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New York had largest 2019-20 population decline of any State
BY E.J. McMAHON New York could be on the way to its first population decline in any decade since the 1970s, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The Empire State’s…
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Perverse incentives, high costs and poor outcomes: Special Education in New York
BY IAN KINGSBURY Much of New York’s highest-in-the-nation education spending is driven by a single category: special education. Of the $66.2 billion spent on K-12 education in New York in 2017-18, $15.8 billion went…
