After James recaps the latest Empire Center research, Debi interviews Cody Snider, Co-President & Co-Founder of UNIT Solutions. The two talk about New York City’s post-pandemic recovery, and the state of political discourse in Manhattan. E.J. McMahon joins the show to talk to Ken Girardin about a new proposal to extend tenure-like protections to virtually every public employee outside New York City.   Video:   Audio:   Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The post Messages of Necessity ..read more

After a quick research recap, Tim talks to Daniel and Peter Arbeeny, two brothers whose father passed away after contracting COVID-19 in a Brooklyn nursing home. Bill and Kyle continue this discussion, talking about Bill’s recent testimony before the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic on nursing home mortality during the pandemic. Video:   Audio:   Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Youtube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The post Messages of Necessity – Episode 14 appeared first on Empire Center for Public Policy ..read more

Developers looking to build thousands of wind turbines off the Mid-Atlantic and New England coast are coming up against a force even more relentless than the Atlantic winds: the Iron Law of Megaprojects, offering a warning of the trouble ahead for green-energy projects. The Iron Law, coined by Oxford Professor Bent Flyvbjerg, says that “megaprojects” — which cost billions of dollars, take years to complete, and are socially transformative — reliably come in over budget, over time, over and over. From Boston’s Big Dig to California’s high-speed rail to Ne ..read more

A state Senate committee on Wednesday approved legislation weakening the ability of local government and school officials to discipline workers by extending tenure-style privileges to virtually every public employee outside New York City.  Under the generations-old civil service law, a typical employee facing discipline is guaranteed written notice of charges and a hearing before someone to whom he or she does not directly report. Evidence is presented, witnesses are questioned and cross-examined, and hearing officers make a recommendation to the manager, who has the final say on whether ..read more

Albany, NY — Most New York City high school seniors missed at least 18 days of school last year, according to a new research report published by the Empire Center for Public Policy. The report, School’s Out Forever: Truancy in New York City Reaches New Heights, details alarming truancy trends in New York City’s public schools, finding 40 percent of students were chronically absent, or missed at least 10 percent of school days. In the Bronx, report author and Empire Center adjunct fellow Ian Kingsbury found about four in 30 children are missing each day, with closer to 3 in 30 missing citywide ..read more

Executive Summary Researchers and journalists have noted that student absenteeism has become significantly worse in schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated school closures. It is not possible to precisely quantify how absenteeism impacts student learning. But even if it isn’t quantifiable, it’s evident that missed school is an undesirable outcome. New York City publishes school-level records to document average daily attendance, or the percent of enrolled students who attend school on any given day. They also publish records on chronic absenteeism, or the number of students ..read more

Public elementary and secondary school spending in New York rose to $26,571 per pupil in 2020-21, according to the latest Census Bureau data—setting a new record high even as pupil performance was falling amid the disruption of in-person learning due to pandemic restrictions. New York’s K-12 spending once again topped that of all states and the District of Columbia—fully 85 percent above the national average of $14,347 per pupil. In dollars-per-pupil terms, the education spending gap between the Empire State and the rest of the country has more than tripled over the past 20 years, as shown bel ..read more

Albany, NY — Empire Center Senior Fellow for Health Policy Bill Hammond will testify before the Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, sharing his expertise on nursing home mortality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hammond’s testimony will focus on the March 25, 2020 New York state Health Department directive, which compelled nursing homes to accept COVID-infected patients being discharged from hospitals. An Empire Center analysis in February 2021 found a statistically significant correlation between the number of patients transferred and higher mortality ..read more

Albany, NY — The Empire Center for Public Policy and New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation (NYFRF) have sued Attorney General Letitia James over ongoing First Amendment violations at the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) connected to confidential charitable donor records.   In 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in AFP v. Bonta that requiring charitable organizations to disclose the identities of their large donors to a state attorney general’s office imposed “a widespread burden on donors’ associational rights.” On that basis, the Court found that donors’ First A ..read more

The stage is set for a battle royale within the New York Democratic Party over climate policy. Governor Hochul has suddenly realized that the cost of the state’s planned emission reduction scheme will be “extraordinary,” and is challenging her own party to make the climate law less damaging to New Yorkers’ pocketbooks. Will the left wing of her party go along? In this year’s budget negotiations Ms. Hochul and the legislature agreed to a cap-and-invest program as recommended by the state’s Climate Action Council. Cap-and-invest programs put an annual limit on the amount of greenhouse gas emissi ..read more