New York’s Explosion of COVID Cases and a Flawed Vaccine Roll-Out When Covid-19 first appeared in New York in March of this year, the state, like other locations, faced a novel disease against which there were few defenses. New York faced a dire situation in March – hospitals in the New York Metropolitan area were overwhelmed. With cases and hospitalizations skyrocketing, the State imposed a lockdown, […]
Don’t Make Poor Districts Shoulder the Burden An opinion piece written for the Albany Times-Union: https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/Viewpoint-Don-t-make-poor-districts-shoulder-the-15573324.php
New York’s School Aid Cuts Will Disproportionately Harm Poor Districts A recent Albany Times-Union report “recently warned officials they should expect state aid payments to be reduced by 20 percent.” The source of the report was the Questar III Board of Cooperative Educational Services State Aid and Financial Planning. The Times-Union article went on to report that “Freeman Klopott, a spokesman for the state budget […]
Covid-19 Cases Reach New Highs: What Have We Learned? As I write in late July, Covid-19 cases continue to reach new highs at the national level. The number of new cases reached more than 66,000 a day in the week ending July 18th, using a seven day rolling average. That number is about two and one half times the 24,000 new cases that were […]
New Covid-19 Cases Decline Throughout New York The number of new reported cases of Coronavirus in New York State has begun to decline. The chart below, which shows the three-day moving average of new cases, indicates that after plateauing from April 3rd to April 10th, a decline began, with cases decreasing from a peak of more than 10,000 to less than 5,000 […]
Will New York Reopen for Business by May 1st? Recent reports show that President Trump would like to reopen the national economy within a few weeks. The Washington Post reported that “President Trump — concerned with the sagging economy — has sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1.” More recently, the President said that he expected some states to reopen before […]
New York’s Local Revenue Sharing Aid Program is Broken: How to Fix It Most New Yorkers are aware that the state has a cap on local property taxes that has effectively slowed their growth. But few know that residents of a few large cities benefit from a multi-million-dollar infusion of state dollars that limits property taxes, while residents of smaller cities, towns and villages get far less help. […]
Times Union Op-Ed: State’s Unfair City Aid Formula Needs Revising I’ve been looking at how well the State’s local revenue sharing works. It doesn’t work well. I wrote an Op-Ed that appears in the Albany Times-Union this weekend: It may be found here: https://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/State-s-unfair-city-aid-formula-needs-revising-13709884.php I’ll have a longer piece that takes a closer look at this on my blog next week.
As Private Sector Employee Incomes Stagnate, Local Government Workers Prosper The slow growth of worker incomes since 2000 has been the subject of intense policy and political debates. One of the clear messages of the 2012 Presidential campaign was the call to remedy perceived distortions in world trade that have disadvantaged American workers, particularly those had in the past held jobs in manufacturing industries. The […]
