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Most Relief Comes from the State Earned Income Tax Credit Enacted in 1994 New York has among the lowest income tax burdens in the country for low-income working families.1 Of the 42 states with income taxes, only Vermont and Minnesota do a better job than New York in shielding both poverty-line incomes and minimum wage-earnings from income taxation. New York is one of only four states in which near-poor two-parent families of four — those with incomes at 125 percent of the poverty line — receive a refundable tax credit rather than having an income tax liability (32 states) or [...]

March 2000. FPI prepares the Budget Process Reform section of Counterbudget, which is coordinated and published each year by SENSES, the Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Security. Counterbudget provides an analysis of the Governor's Executive Budget Proposal and its impact on low-income New Yorkers focusing on the programs and policies identified as priority issues by the SENSES network of over 2500 human service, religious, labor, economic development and low-income organizations - issues including economic development, public assistance, health care, hunger and nutrition, housing, taxes and revenues, and the budget process. For a copy of the complete report, please [...]

March 2000. FPI prepares the Revenue section of Counterbudget, which is coordinated and published each year by SENSES, the Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Security. Counterbudget provides an analysis of the Governor's Executive Budget Proposal and its impact on low-income New Yorkers focusing on the programs and policies identified as priority issues by the SENSES network of over 2500 human service, religious, labor, economic development and low-income organizations - issues including economic development, public assistance, health care, hunger and nutrition, housing, taxes and revenues, and the budget process. Highlights below; for a copy of the complete report, please [...]

March 15, 2000. A copy of the letter below was sent to each of the 50 governors. Ms. Johnson is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives. The Honorable Don Siegelman Governor of Alabama State Capitol 600 Dexter Avenue Montgomery, AL 36130-2751 Dear Governor Siegelman: As you may recall, I wrote last year urging you and other governors to increase the rate at which TANF money is spent, because there is so much states can do to increase self sufficiency. After 60 years of failed attempts to bring people out [...]

March 6, 2000. William Tuthill reports in the Capital District Business Review: New York state's array of economic development programs, in which  millions of dollars are annually loaned or given to spur businesses and create jobs,  lack adequate means of measuring their own effectiveness, according to a  report by State Comptroller H. Carl McCall. There are not enough tools in place to show whether funded projects  have resulted in the increase or retention of jobs, the report said. It is an  argument McCall has made before since taking office in 1993, as did his predecessor, former Comptroller Edward Regan. The [...]

February 14, 2000. FPI Executive Director Frank Mauro takes a look at the revenue side of the 2000-2001 Executive Budget. Governor George Pataki's first Executive Budget of the new century avoids some of the most counter productive cuts of his previous budgets. The 2000-2001 Executive Budget, for example, does not propose cuts in Tuition Assistance for the neediest of students, and it avoids what had come to bean annual battle over Medicaid. BUT this latest Pataki budget fails miserably in seizing the opportunities provided by the boom on Wall Street, the Tobacco Settlement monies, and the "Welfare Windfall" that the [...]

February 9, 2000. A report by Frank Mauro and Carolyn Boldiston. The current TANF surpluses provide New York State with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to fight poverty and lift poor families towards independence and self-support. This includes liberalizing the earned income disregard, providing a long overdue grant increase, and making new efforts to reach hard-to-serve parents and children. New York is more likely to continue to meet work participation rates if it invests in activities that have proven successful in helping people to move from welfare to work. The report is supplemented by a glossary, given below. The PDF version of [...]

February 1, 2000. An op ed by FPI's Trudi Renwick, in Newsday. A new study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute reports that New York has the most unequal income distribution of the 50 states. Concerted action by both the public and private sectors is needed to reverse this imbalance. The average income of the top 20 percent of New York families is 14 times as large as the average income of the poorest 20 percent. New York also has the third widest income gap between the rich and the middle class, behind [...]

January 25, 2000. The Fiscal Policy Institute's annual budget briefing: State government has begun to address one of New York's most glaring social disparities (the large and growing number of New Yorkers without health insurance), and it has begun investing in several other areas in which there are significant social investment gaps (such as child care). Unfortunately, it continues to miss the opportunity to use the surpluses generated by the boom on Wall Street and several other factors to do more in these areas, to begin addressing the state's numerous other unmet social and infrastructure investment needs, and to put [...]

January 18, 2000. New York State and New York City have always had much to brag about. There is, however, at least one major national trend in which New York's preeminence is more of a danger sign than a blessing. This involves the widening gap that exists between the economic well-being of people at the top of the socioeconomic ladder and those below them on that ladder. New national and state reports show income inequality in New York is the worst of any state. Below, the executive summary of the state report on income trends in New York State and [...]

January 7, 2000. This audit (Report 98-S-7) by the Office of the State Comptroller concluded that the ESDC does a poor job of tracking employment at companies that receive state subsidies, and that many companies have fallen short of the promises for creating or retaining jobs on which their subsidies were based.

December 2, 1999. This paper is part of the series Rethinking the Urban Agenda, sponsored by the Century Foundation and the Center for Urban Research at the CUNY Graduate Center.  Text of report, tables and charts.

December 2, 1999. The Fair Budget Campaign issues its third annual "People's Budget;" a wide range of groups call on Governor and Legislature to InVEST in New York's "human infrastructure." Press release: The Fair Budget Campaign released its third annual People's Budget today, calling for increased investment in the state's most valuable resource: its people. The Fair Budget Campaign is a cooperative project of ten statewide organizations that represent religious, senior citizen, community, student, environmental and taxpayer perspectives. The leaders of the campaign's member organizations joined together at a noontime press conference in the Legislative Office Building to call for [...]

October 1999. In a nutshell: The Minimum Wage and New Yorkers' Hourly Wages Have Declined. Despite sizable growth in the productivity of our nation's economy over the last 30 years, the purchasing power of the federal minimum wage has fallen by one-third. · The value of the minimum wage has dropped to less than 40 percent of average hourly earnings, down from over 50 percent in the 1960s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the earnings of a full-time, year-round worker receiving the minimum wage were enough to lift a family of three above the poverty line. Now, such a worker's [...]

September 30, 1999. Press release: The new poverty statistics released today by the United States Census Bureau show that  New York's poverty rate remained high while the national poverty rate continues to fall. The national poverty rate declined for the fifth consecutive year. This year's decline was particularly large, from 13.3% to 12.7%. At the same time, however, New York's poverty rate showed no improvement. Actually New York's poverty rate increased from 16.5% in 1997 to 16.7% in 1998 but the Census Bureau recommends the use of two-year averages when comparing changes in poverty at the state level to ensure [...]

September 1999.  By Frank J. Mauro. The first minimum wage at the federal level was signed into law in 1938, after several states including New York had enacted their own minimum wage laws. The U. S. Supreme Court had first invalidated such state laws as violating the liberty of contract and then upheld them as a proper exercise of the states' power to protect the public health, safety and welfare. From the very beginning, such laws protected responsible employers from the pressures that could be brought to bear by unscrupulous competitors while ensuring that all workers received some minimally acceptable [...]

September 1, 1999. Prosperity bypasses most New Yorkers. Wages fall, the upstate economy falters, and the ranks of the working poor rise over the 1990s. Press release below. Executive Summary Introduction Chapter 1 - Income Chapter 2 - Wages & Compensation Chapter 3 - Jobs Chapter 4 - New York's Slow & Uneven Growth in the 1990's Chapter 5 - New York's Regions in the 1990's Capital District Central New York Finger Lakes Region Hudson Valley Long Island Mohawk Valley New York City North Country Southern Tier Western New York Chapter 6 - A Strategic New Direction Glossary, Appendix, Note [...]

May 27, 1999. The Upstate Economy: Testimony delivered by Trudi Renwick, Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute, Utica, New York. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the economic development challenges facing Upstate New York. I would like to review the economic situation in the State and then talk about three issues that affect the Upstate Economy: STAR, the difficulty of the welfare-to-work transition for people with no paid work experience even in areas with tight labor markets, and the ability of the State to leverage its purchasing power to generate economic activity in Upstate New York. While there was some [...]

May 25, 1999. Legislators and coalition of statewide organizations urge New York to join national move toward greater accountability in the granting of corporate subsidies. Group press release: "State and local taxpayers should get their money's worth from the billions in government subsidies that are given to businesses each year in New York State," declared the Fair Budget Campaign at a press conference this morning at the Legislative Office Building in Albany. The Fair Budget Campaign is a cooperative project of nine statewide organizations that represent religious, senior citizen, community, environmental and taxpayer perspectives. The leaders of the campaign's member [...]

May 11, 1999. The Upstate Economy: Testimony delivered by James Parrott, Deputy Director and Chief Economist, Fiscal Policy Institute, Albany, New York. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the economic development challenges facing Upstate New York. The lagging performance of the upstate economies is a serious issue. Weak job growth for an extended period in the 1990s has restrained income growth and the resulting lack of job opportunities has, unfortunately but not unexpectedly, led many people to give up entirely on New York and move elsewhere. Our state has the dubious distinction of leading the country in the [...]