Tag: New York

Schumer spokesman: Federal pandemic relief eliminates NYS deficit

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/03/08/schumer-federal-pandemic-relief-eliminates-nys-deficit/

Excerpt:

The $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package passed by the US Senate wipes out New York State’s projected budget deficit — possibly negating the need for hefty tax hikes or spending cuts, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said Monday.

“Ok. Thanks to @SenSchumer NYS budget deficit for this year is…..Zero, nada, niete, zilch (NY terms),” Schumer spokesman Angelo Roefaro tweeted.

The American Rescue Plan provides state government coffers with $12.6 billion in unrestricted aid, a measure championed by Schumer, the New York senior senator. The measure passed the Senate in a 50-49 vote and is expected to clear the Democratic-led House of Representatives on Tuesday and delivered to President Biden for approval.

Author(s): Carl Campanile, Bernadette Hogan

Publication Date: 8 March 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Why It’s Time for States to Raise Their Tobacco Taxes

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.governing.com/now/Why-Its-Time-for-States-to-Raise-Their-Tobacco-Taxes.html

Excerpt:

In the face of the pandemic, states across the geographic and political spectrum — including Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico and New York — are actively considering tobacco tax increases during their legislative sessions. Last month, a bipartisan supermajority in the Maryland Legislature moved to increase the state’s cigarette tax by $1.75 per pack, the first increase in nearly a decade, and to establish a tax on e-cigarettes to fund tobacco cessation and health programs.

The growing legislative momentum comes after voters in Colorado and Oregon approved tobacco tax increases in ballot measures last November. Colorado, which had not raised tobacco taxes in 16 years, will collect an estimated $175 million in revenue during the 2021-22 budget year for tobacco cessation and health programs. In Oregon, higher tobacco taxes will generate an estimated $160 million per year and help to fund the care of people with mental illnesses and other conditions.

Author(s): NANCY BROWN, AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION

Publication Date: 15 March 2021

Publication Site: Governing

COVID vaccine czar to face complaint after ‘inappropriate’ calls about Cuomo

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/03/14/covid-19-vaccine-czar-to-be-subject-of-complaint-calling-about-cuomo/

Excerpt:

A longtime lieutenant to Gov. Cuomo — who is now overseeing New York’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout — called around county officials to gauge their loyalty to the governor amid sexual harassment and misconduct allegations, it emerged Sunday.

Larry Schwartz, who formerly held the highly influential position of secretary to the governor, undertook the phone campaign in the past two weeks as more than a half-dozen women have come forward to accuse Cuomo of inappropriate remarks or behavior.

“Last Friday, I had a conversation with Larry Schwartz who reached out to discuss whether I was supportive of the governor,” Democratic Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone told The Post.

Author(s): Carl Campanile, Aaron Feis

Publication Date: 14 March 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

New York’s vaccine czar called county officials to gauge their loyalty to Cuomo amid sexual harassment investigation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/cuomo-schwartz-vaccine-calls/2021/03/14/18f2e320-8448-11eb-9ca6-54e187ee4939_story.html?fbclid=IwAR1_kucY6IuuqosArhyJ203JxSha3ZcmndHtvDX6URSZod-bqCmgxCZBB0k

Excerpt:

New York’s “vaccine czar” — a longtime adviser to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo — phoned county officials in the past two weeks in attempts to gauge their loyalty to the embattled governor amid an ongoing sexual harassment investigation, according to multiple officials.

One Democratic county executive was so unsettled by the outreach from Larry Schwartz, head of the state’s vaccine rollout, that the executive on Friday filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the public integrity unit of the state attorney general’s office, the official told The Washington Post. The executive feared the county’s vaccine supply could suffer if Schwartz was not pleased with the executive’s response to his questions about support of the governor.

The executive said the conversation with Schwartz came in proximity to a separate conversation with another Cuomo administration official about vaccine distribution.

Author(s): Amy Brittain, Josh Dawsey

Publication Date: 14 March 2021

Publication Site: Washington Post

Exclusive: Cuomo created disabled group home deathtraps, whistleblower says

Mary Pat Campbell

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s nursing home deathtraps have silent partners — a network of some 7,000 group homes where thousands of disabled COVID-19-positive residents languished with little foresight or intervention by the state, a whistleblower has told the Washington Examiner.

Some 552 developmentally disabled individuals died from COVID-19 in the past year living in small residential group homes, while an additional 6,382 residents and workers were infected, according to the New York State Office for People With Developmental Disabilities. No comprehensive protocol existed to combat the disease as infected individuals were purposely mixed with clean households, said care worker Jeff Monsour.

Link: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cuomo-created-disabled-group-home-deathtraps-whistleblower

Excerpt:

Author(s): Carly Roman, Tori Richards

Publication Date: 11 March 2021

Publication Site: Washington Examiner

Schumer spokesman: Federal pandemic relief eliminates NYS deficit

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/03/08/schumer-federal-pandemic-relief-eliminates-nys-deficit/

Excerpt:

The American Rescue Plan provides state government coffers with $12.6 billion in unrestricted aid, a measure championed by Schumer, the New York senior senator. The measure passed the Senate in a 50-49 vote and is expected to clear the Democratic-led House of Representatives on Tuesday and delivered to President Biden for approval.

Asked if the geyser of pandemic relief eliminates the needs for tax hikes or spending cuts, Roefaro told The Post, “the statement speaks for itself.”

Roefaro continued, “How NY decides its budgetary policy is a matter for the state legislature and the administration. Our job was to deliver resources to help NY confront and overcome Covid and it’s impacts, including the fiscal impact. And we did that fully and completely.”

Author(s): Carl Campanile, Bernadette Hogan

Publication Date: 8 March 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Biden, Congress about to rain cash on NY state, local governments

Mary Pat Campbell
Biden, Congress about to rain cash on NY state, local governments

Excerpt:

As Governor Cuomo already has pointed out on the state level, the federal stimulus aid amounts to “the ultimate one shot . . . a sugar high.” The highest priority of state and local officials should be to avoid plowing the federal money into recurring spending commitments that will create bigger budget deficits in the future.

In an ideal world, New York pols will embark on a careful, painstaking assessment of needs, weighing short-term relief against recurring long-term benefits. Since most upstate cities are very old, with crumbling physical infrastructures, they would be well advised to invest the bulk of their “Biden bucks” into streets, sidewalks, water and sewer systems. This will save money on maintenance costs—which are high in many of these places. It also will help these cities retain and attract business activity they cannot afford to lose—and were already losing before the pandemic.

Local governments could also consider ways to help small local retail businesses and their landlords, especially restaurants and entertainment venues, which were crushed by the pandemic. One way of doing this might be a property tax holiday, or a long-overdue assessment and equalization update, whose transitional costs could be covered by the federal money.

Author(s): E. J. McMahon

Publication Date: 10 March 2021

Publication Site: Empire Center

DiNapoli: State’s Fiscal Picture Has Improved, but Impact of Pandemic Revenue Losses Will Linger

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/2021/03/dinapoli-states-fiscal-picture-has-improved-impact-pandemic-revenue-losses-will-linger

Excerpt:

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today said there are some positive developments for the state’s fiscal recovery from the pandemic, including higher than expected personal income tax collections and the prospect of significant aid from the federal government, in his review of the Executive Budget for State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2021-22, as amended by the Governor. However, risks remain and could threaten the state’s fragile improvement.

DiNapoli urged the Governor and the Legislature to avoid short-sighted choices when adopting the new budget, to maintain transparency and include oversight measures. He recommended that actions be taken to address the state’s long-term structural imbalance and put the state’s finances on a sustainable path once emergency federal aid ends.

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 2 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller

New York Unemployment Claims Show a Year of Economic Devastation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/impact-covid-19-march-4-2021

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Immediately before the pandemic hit New York, for weeks ending in late February and early March 2020, statewide UI claims averaged around 167,000. Those claims almost doubled to over 314,000, as the shutdown went into effect, starting a weeks-long upward spike that reached more than 3.1 million in mid-May. The historic peak of nearly 3.4 million claimants came in the last week of May 2020. The totals from May onward include claimants under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) which provides benefits to individuals not traditionally eligible for unemployment assistance because of self-employment or certain other reasons. (Due to the PUA and other factors, the numbers of workers claiming unemployment benefits differ from the count of those officially counted as unemployed, which peaked in New York State at 1.5 million or 15.9 percent of the labor force in July 2020.)

The longstanding, regular State program of UI benefits funded by employer contributions was the only source of benefits for the first six weeks shown in the graph and continued to fund the largest numbers of claims into early August. (These payments were supplemented by additional federally funded benefits of $600 or $300 weekly for much, though not all, of the period shown.)

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York Comproller

Can States Be Trusted To Manage Retirement Savings? Two New Reasons For Concern

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2021/02/28/can-states-be-trusted-to-manage-retirement-savings-two-new-reasons-for-concern/

Excerpt:

Readers, I have long been of the opinion that it’s a sensible approach to enable savers to choose among multiple retirement funds, so that they are able to reflect their particular ethical concerns, whether this means an “ESG” (environmental, social, and governance-issue focused) fund or a religious-screening approach, such as excluding companies which donate to Planned Parenthood (Ave Maria Funds) or which are in the alcohol industry (GuideStone Funds).

But no state official should be using investors’ money to play politics — not the money of individual investors through state-run IRAs or the retirement savings accounts of state employees, and not the money of public pension funds. And, frankly, I find it appalling that these sorts of actions aren’t universally considered to be wholly out of bounds — but I suppose living in Illinois (newly-declared the third-most-corrupt state, with Chicago as the most-corrupt city), I suppose I should lower my expectations. Readers in the remaining 49 states, however, should watch carefully.

Author(s): Elizabeth Bauer

Publication Date: 28 February 2021

Publication Site: Forbes

Implications of COVID-19 Mortality Patterns for Nursing Home Regulation in New York

Mary Pat Campbell
Implications of COVID-19 Mortality Patterns for Nursing Home Regulation in New York

Graphic:

Excerpt:

In its January 28 report, the attorney general’s office argued that low staffing levels in nursing homes was associated with higher death rates from the novel coronavirus. As evidence of that connection, the report presented a table (reproduced in Table 1 below) comparing death rates in nursing homes based on their star ratings for staffing from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).[5] It showed that homes with the lowest staffing grade of one star had an aggregate COVID-19 mortality rate of 7.13 percent, compared to 4.94 percent for homes with a five-star rating.

However, that table was based on the limited data available in mid-November, which encompassed 6,645 deaths, only half the number that are documented now.

When that table is brought up to date, it shows no clear association between lower staffing grades and higher coronavirus mortality (see Table 2). Homes with a three-star staff rating showed the largest percentage of deaths, at 13.62, compared to 12.98 for two-star homes and 12.14 for one-star homes.[6]

Author(s): Bill Hammond, Ian Kingsbury

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Empire Center for Public Policy

Cuomo Aides Altered Nursing Home Report to Conceal Death Toll

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cuomo-aides-altered-nursing-home-report-to-conceal-death-toll/

Excerpt:

Aides to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rewrote a July report by state health officials to conceal the number of nursing home residents who died from coronavirus in the state, according to reports.

Cuomo’s top aides worked to hide the fact that more than 9,000 nursing home residents had died from the virus in the state at the time, according to reports from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. 

….

Cuomo’s aides clashed with the state’s health officials over the July report, which the Health Department worked on with the consulting firm McKinsey. The report included a chart comparing nursing home deaths in New York with other states, according to the New York Times, which showed that New York’s total of 9,250 deaths was far greater than that of the next highest state, New Jersey, which had 6,150 at that time.

The chart put the death toll at about 50 percent higher than the number the Cuomo administration had touted at the time.

Author(s): BRITTANY BERNSTEIN

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: National Review