December 24, 2007.
FPI Comments on
NYSERDA's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) Rulemaking. FPI
comments urging NYSERDA to amend the proposed rule to include low-income
protection as an explicitly mandated purpose for the proceeds of the auction of
the RGGI allowances and to add at least one low-income advocate to the list of
stakeholders to be included in the advisory group to oversee the expenditures of
the auction proceeds.
December 19, 2007.
Immigrants boosting N.Y. middle class. A column by FPI senior fellow
David Dyssegaard Kallick, Metro New York.
December 18, 2007.
Could
Wall Street's Woes Be Good for New York?
By James Parrott, FPI's deputy director and chief economist, who writes monthly for Gotham
Gazette's Economy
section.
December 18, 2007.
Testimony on
economic development in New York State.
Submitted by FPI's chief economist James Parrott to the New York State Division
of the Budget. New York's trillion dollar economy has the potential to be a
dynamic economy that rewards all New Yorkers, but challenges abound, including
volatility on Wall Street. And there is little to show for the billions of
dollars spent
on economic development
in 2007 by state and local governments. New York needs a new approach
that is strategic, diverse, coordinated and accountable.
December 13, 2007.
Testimony of
Frank Mauro before the NYS Division of the Budget Public Hearing on Property
Taxes. Description of the special problems faced by New York localities
with relatively weak tax bases compared to their needs.
To a large extent, state fiscal policies have caused great pressure on property
taxes in needy cities, counties and school districts, including decisions: to
reduce revenue sharing; to decrease the share of local school budgets covered by
state aid, to divide the non-federal share of Medicaid costs without considering
ability to pay, and
to allocate STAR benefits in a way that exacerbates fiscal disparities.
December 5, 2007.
Building
Up New York, Tearing Down Job Quality: Taxpayer Impact of Worsening Employment
Practices in the New York City Construction Industry.
Workers, taxpayers and honest employers pay the price - $489 million in
2005 and are likely to reach $557 million in 2008 - as construction employment
practices deteriorate in New York City. FPI's new report
looks at the
50,000 construction workers (one in four) employed
off the books or as so-called independent contractors - at substantial cost to
themselves and to taxpayers in general.
December 5, 2007.
The Health Care and
Social Costs of the Uninsured in New York State.
Using analysis from the Urban Institute and data from the New York State
Department of Health, FPI estimates the
distribution by county of full-year nonelderly uninsured, the cost of
uncompensated care, and the social costs of uninsured.
December 5, 2007.
Testimony of Frank Mauro before the NYS Assembly Standing Committee on Real
Property Taxation. Using data from the American Community Survey, FPI
estimates the cost, number of beneficiaries and average benefits of the
circuit breaker credit, as proposed (Galef/Little
A.1575/S.1053)
and with several
modifications.
November 26, 2007. Working for a
Better Life: A Profile of Immigrants in the New York State Economy.
What
role do immigrants play in the New York State economy?
New results from FPI show that in 2006, they added $229 billion in economic
activity - representing fully 22.4 percent of the state's gross domestic
product. This
major new report also examines what countries immigrants come
from, where they work and how well they are doing. The report includes detailed
analysis of the role of immigrant workers and families in three distinct
regional economies: New York City, the downstate suburbs, and upstate New York.
November 6, 2007.
Wall
Street's Binge, Workers' Hangover.
By James Parrott, FPI's deputy director and chief economist, who writes monthly for Gotham
Gazette's Economy
section.
October 29, 2007.
Difference between the
President's Budget and House Appropriations: Impact on New York State for
Selected Programs. President Bush has threatened to veto an array of
appropriations bills because they provide funding for domestic programs above
the levels he requested in his budget. Adopting the president's budget request
would mean significantly less funding in some key domestic programs that provide
critical services to a broad swath of families and communities - less than the
House has appropriated, less than the amount needed to keep pace with inflation
and in some cases, even less than 2007 levels. This brief includes
CBPP estimates of the difference in funding for
New York for some of these programs.
October 24, 2007.
TANF
Spending in New York.
Presented by
FPI senior economist Trudi Renwick at a meeting convened by the
New York Children's Action Network (New
York CAN) Income Security Subcommittee.
October 15, 2007.
Property
Taxes on Long Island: Zeroing in on the Problems and Solutions. This report
takes a fresh look at the property tax "crisis" and finds that: flawed
evaluations have resulted in flawed solutions, taxpayers in poorer districts
struggle the most, and voters in wealthy districts choose to pay for high
quality schools while voters in poorer districts have a much higher rate of
rejecting school budgets. Two oft-touted reforms have a negative impact on local
control and school equity; circuit breaker reform in contrast can be well
targeted to those who need relief most. Released jointly with
Alliance for Quality Education, the
Public Policy and Education Fund, and the
Long Island Progressive Coalition.
September 28, 2007.
Testimony on
the adequacy of the public assistance grant in New York State. Presented by
FPI Senior Economist Trudi Renwick
to the Assembly Standing Committee on Social Services.
September 27, 2007. FPI senior economist Trudi Renwick presented
New
York's Empire Zone Program as part of a panel discussion of "Who Benefits? State and Local Subsidy Reform."
Part of a conference,
The High
Road Runs Through the City: Advocating for Economic Justice at the Local Level,
sponsored in Buffalo by the Cornel ILR School and others.
September 25, 2007.
Testimony on
New York State's Brownfields Cleanup and Opportunity Area Programs.
Submitted by FPI Executive Director
Frank Mauro to the Senate and Assembly Committees on Environmental Conservation.
September 1, 2007. The State of Working New York:
Encouraging Recent Gains, but Troubling Long-Term Trends. This sixth edition
of FPI's biennial snapshot of the state economy finds a modest increase in wages
against a backdrop of worrisome trends.
For example: workers aren't seeing wage increases commensurate with their
productivity; New Yorkers living in upstate cities are twice as likely to be
poor as people nationwide; and the gap between rich and poor (and between the
rich and the middle) continues to grow. Link to
press release, executive summary, full report and podcast.
August 28, 2007.
Statement from
Frank Mauro on the New Poverty Data Released Today by the United States Census
Bureau. Worrisome trends: New York continues to have the
highest poverty rate of all of the northeastern and northern industrial
states. The poverty rates in New York's major upstate cities are incredibly
high.
August 8, 2007.
Congressmen must explain cuts in critical programs. By FPI's senior
economist, Trudi Renwick, together with Bob Cohen of Citizens Action.
August 7, 2007.
Neighborhoods and the Fiscal Boom.
By James Parrott, FPI's deputy director and chief economist, who writes monthly for Gotham
Gazette's Economy
section.
July 17, 2007.
Community,
Religious, Service Organizations: Congress Should Stand With New York Families,
Not Bush.
FPI joins more than 30
children's, hunger,
religious, social service and other advocacy organizations in calling on the
state's representatives to resist pressure from the administration to cut
funding for education, child care, worker training and similar programs. More
details about why
the modest increases under consideration in
Congress cannot be characterized as fiscally irresponsible are in
FPI's new report,
The Fight over
Federal Appropriations: Impact on New York State.
July 11, 2007.
Groups
Call for Reform of Business Subsidy Programs. FPI teamed up with New Yorkers
for Fiscal Fairness, Environmental Advocates, NYPIRG and
the Sierra Club to call attention to the taxpayer funds being poured into
Empire Zones, the Brownfield Cleanup Program, and industrial development
agencies - business subsidy programs that lack basic accountability measures and
anti-sprawl provisions.
July 6, 2007.
The
Public Cost of Privatized Medicare: How Medicare Advantage is hurting Medicare
beneficiaries and other New York taxpayers. A report from FPI and Citizen
Action New York finds that a privatized Medicare plan is costing taxpayers $709
million in excess premiums. These funds would be better used to finance the
governor's plan to cover all uninsured children. Press release
here.
June 21, 2007.
Income
Numbers Show a Changing City by James Parrott, who writes monthly for Gotham
Gazette's Economy
section.
June 14, 2007.
Another voice / Immigration reform: Law should direct families toward upstate
cities. An op ed by David Dyssegaard Kallick in the Buffalo News.
June 14, 2007.
New York needs a
Statewide Commission on Economic Security and Poverty.
FPI joined the
New York State
Community Action Association (NYSCAA) and New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness in
calling on Governor Spitzer and the New York State Legislature to establish a
commission on economic security to advise policymakers on how to help low income
families get ahead. Over 100 organizations from around the state joined in the
request.
June 7, 2007.
Poor's nutritional needs not being met. An op ed by Trudi Renwick
that ran in several editions of Spotlight News, a capital area weekly.
June 7, 2007.
Statewide
Coalition Joins Assemblyman Brodsky to Call for an Immediate Moratorium on the
Empire Zone Program.
At a press conference focused on reforms of
the Empire Zone program, FPI executive director Frank Mauro spoke about the
differential tax treatment that is fostered by the program as currently
structured.
June 3, 2007.
Freelancers Inc.
An op ed by James Parrott in the New York Times.
May 16, 2007.
Religious and civic leaders
pledge to try the "Food
Stamp Diet" - and eat on $3.50 a day - and FPI
releases a new
report, Stretched Too Thin: Food Stamp Benefits in New York State. Bishop
Howard J. Hubbard of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany,
Rev. Paul D. Rees-Rohrbacher of St. John's Lutheran Church in Albany, Ed
Bloch of the Interfaith Alliance of New York State, Lynda Schuyler of
Food Pantries for the Capital District and Linda Bopp of the Nutrition Consortium of New York State
joined FPI senior economist Trudi Renwick in taking the food stamp
challenge. Bishop Hubbard's remarks available
here.
May 10, 2007.
Food
Stamp Challenge - LIVE ON A FOOD STAMP BUDGET. The Food Stamp program is
America's first line of defense against hunger and food insecurity. As
Congress prepares to reauthorize the Farm Bill,
New Yorkers can act to to strengthen the program and
prevent further erosion of the value of food stamp benefits by agreeing to live on a
food stamp budget ($1.16 per person per meal) for a day.
May 3, 2007. Pre-K
Investment Yields Bonuses for Children, Families, Communities and State and
Federal Government. This new study from the Economic Policy Institute,
Enriching Children,
Enriching the Nation, was co-released in New York by FPI and Winning
Beginning New York. The question asked is whether pre-K pays for itself - and the
answer is remarkable. Pre-K pays for itself not once, not twice, but 12 times
over!
April 15, 2007.
The Underground
Economy in New York City's Affordable Housing Construction Industry.
This examination of the affordable housing construction industry
reveals evidence of a huge underground economy in which thousands of workers are
paid off the books or misclassified as independent contractors. The results
include widespread employer evasion of payroll taxes and social insurance
premiums, and the undercutting of wage and benefit standards.
Press release
here. (Please
note the April 15 version of the report contained typographical errors in Tables
4 and 7. In the version now available, these tables have been corrected.)
March 6, 2007.
Cutting Upstate
Adrift Doesn't Serve It Well. A statement from FPI executive director Frank
Mauro.
March 1, 2007.
Testimony on the 2007-08 Executive Budget, presented by FPI
Senior Economist Trudi Renwick to the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means Committees.
February 28, 2007.
Testimony on the 2007-08 Executive Budget, presented by FPI Executive Director
Frank Mauro to the Senate Finance and Assembly Ways and Means Committees.
February 28, 2007. 2007-08 Executive
Budget Tackles Corporate Tax Loopholes. Short summaries of the
corporate tax reform measures recommended by Governor Eliot Spitzer as part of
his first Executive Budget.
February 21, 2007. First Things First
for New York: The President's Budget Makes the Wrong Choices for New York. An analysis of the impact of the President's 2008 proposed budget on New York,
released in collaboration with Citizen Action of New York, the Coalition for
Human Needs and the Emergency Campaign for America's Priorities. Press release
and summary table here.
February 13, 2007.
More Than a Link in the Food Chain: A Study of the Citywide Economic Impact of
Food Manufacturing in New York City. In an effort to understand the impact
of food manufacturing on other sectors in the NYC economy, the Mayor's Office of
Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses commissioned the New York Industrial
Retention Network (NYIRN) to study the sector; NYIRN enlisted FPI to conduct the
formal economic impact analysis.
February 7, 2007.
Balancing New York State's 2007-08 Budget in an
Economically Sensible Manner (PDF). Governor Eliot Spitzer's first executive
budget
is the focus of FPI's seventeenth annual budget briefing: a discussion of
economic and fiscal context for the budget, and an analysis of the extent to
which the budget helps
the state's regions grow together and strengthens and expands the middle class.
See upcoming events for our schedule of budget
presentations.
February 7, 2007.
The
President's 07-08 Budget: What It Means to New Yorkers. President Bush
released his budget on February 5, 2007. The budget pays for massive tax cuts
for the rich by cutting services and programs for the poor. The President's
proposals balance the federal budget only on paper, and make it harder for New
York to balance its budget.
January 25, 2007, with addendum of February 5, 2007.
New York State
Workers' Compensation: How Big Is the Coverage Shortfall? Between 500,000
and a million New York workers who should have workers' compensation coverage do
not, and the system's revenues are $500 million to $1 billion lower than they
should be. Fragmented responsibility for enforcement has allowed employers to
provide unemployment insurance but not workers' compensation coverage to some
workers; in other cases employers misclassify employees as consultants to keep
them out of both systems.
January 22, 2007. New York's 2005-2007 minimum wage increases: Good for
the state's workers, good for the economy. Minimum wage increases in New
York have defied predictions that they would hurt the very low-wage workers they
were designed to help. In fact, while benefiting many New Yorkers, they have not
led to shrinking employment in low-wage businesses. Based on this evidence, New
York's minimum wage should be raised again (to the point that a full time worker
could keep a family of three out of poverty) and then indexed to the cost of
living.
January 10, 2007.
How to Reduce the Pressure on the Property Tax and Ease the Fiscal Burden on
Struggling Local Governments. The four-point plan supported by FPI:
implement a statewide solution to CFE; increase state's share of Medicaid and
base counties' shares on ability to pay; restore commitment to revenue sharing;
and eliminate the significant disparities in the STAR program. Prepared for the
Center on Governmental Research conference on reforming property taxes in New
York. More here.
