DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY NY | Fake Democratic Senators

A Primary is being held today in New York State. The Independent Democratic Conference, or IDC, was composed of Democratic State Senators who caucused separately from other Democrats, and voted with Republicans. They are sham Democrats and have had a pernicious role in Albany.

The following guide to identifying them was provided to me by Heidi Fiske. Vote for the real Democrats, not the sham IDC.

HEALTH CARE | Federal and State Policy in 2017

Gottfried at a Health Care Rally in Albany.

I just received an email from my NY State Assemblyman, Richard N. Gottfried, who chairs the Assembly Health Committee. 

He says (with some minor edits by me to save space and clarify references):

The election of Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress are a serious threat to programs and policies that protect our health.  Washington could make radical changes to Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, reproductive care, and other programs that could drastically undermine our right to health care, cost New York State billions of dollars a year in federal funds, and destabilize health care providers. ...

For years, congressional attacks on funding and programs have been defeated by the threat or use of presidential vetoes. Now we will have a president who may be leading the charge.

Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), we [in NY State] get 90% federal matching money, instead of the usual 50%, for the "expanded" Medicaid population. ACA repeal would take away the additional funding and cost New York over $2 billion a year. ACA repeal would also eliminate federal funding for the new Essential Plan, blowing an additional $800 million hole in the state budget and potentially leaving 100,000 New Yorkers without health coverage.

President-elect Trump has vowed to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, and Vice President-elect Mike Pence is an anti-choice extremist who carried legislation doing just that. This is a major platform for the Republican Party and it's likely that Congress would eliminate federal support for family planning services. If President-elect Trump has his way, a new Supreme Court majority would not only overturn Roe v. Wade, but could go further and outlaw some or all abortion - overriding New York's law that protects legal abortion. ...

When Trump and Republicans in Congress say "repeal and replace Obamacare," the agenda is eliminating financial help for low and middle income people who can't afford high premiums and deductibles, shifting more of the cost of health care from insurance companies to consumers, and eliminating consumer protections. They talk about letting insurance companies sell in any state, but insurance companies already can do that. What they really mean is making out-of-state insurance companies exempt from state consumer protection and financial solvency laws. ...

Much of our state public health policy is driven by federal funding, laws, regulations and oversight. We must protect the federal policies and programs New York depends on, and respond with appropriate changes to state law when needed.

Our health insurance-based system is a major contributor to economic inequality and lack of opportunity. The insurance company wants the same premium and imposes the same "cost sharing" whether you're a multi-millionaire CEO or the receptionist struggling to make ends meet. For a median-income household, the cost of insurance can be over a quarter of your income (whether paid by the worker directly or indirectly by your employer lowering your wages). And that's not counting possibly thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs.

The New York Health Act is my bill to provide complete universal health coverage (called "single payer" or "improved Medicare for all"), eliminate financial barriers to care, and let people go to the doctor and hospital of their choice. Instead of regressive premiums, deductibles, co-pays and out-of-network charges, it would be funded fairly through broad-based taxes based on ability to pay.

The Assembly passed the bill in 2015 and 2016 - helping to move it from being "a great idea that could never happen" to something really achievable. In 2017, we will continue to work to build public support so it can ultimately pass the [NY State] Senate.

JOBS | Metro NY and NJ

September data on Metro Area non-farm jobs shows an increase of 130,500 jobs in the Greater New York area, which includes all of Long Island. This is the best performance of metro areas in New York State. In fact, jobs grew substantially in New York State only in the Hudson River corridor from New York City through Kingston to Albany.

Metropolitan area	State	Sept. 2013  (‘000)	Sept. 2014(p) (‘000)	Change (‘000)	Change (%)
Trenton-Ewing, NJ	New Jersey	247.2	252.0	4.8	1.9
Ocean City, NJ	New Jersey	46.8	47.2	0.4	0.9
Vineland-Millville-Bridgeton, NJ	New Jersey	57.3	57.8	0.5	0.9
Atlantic City-Hammonton, NJ	New Jersey	138.7	128.7	-10.0	-7.2
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA	New York	8,710.1	8,840.6	130.5	1.5
Kingston, NY	New York	60.3	60.8	0.5	0.8
Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY	New York	448.2	451.3	3.1	0.7
Buffalo-Niagara Falls, NY	New York	551.9	554.5	2.6	0.5
Elmira, NY	New York	38.7	38.8	0.1	0.3
Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY	New York	254.0	254.4	0.4	0.2
Ithaca, NY	New York	70.4	70.5	0.1	0.1
Rochester, NY	New York	515.7	516.2	0.5	0.1
Binghamton, NY	New York	106.3	106.1	-0.2	-0.2
Glens Falls, NY	New York	55.0	54.8	-0.2	-0.4
Syracuse, NY	New York	317.3	316.1	-1.2	-0.4
Utica-Rome, NY	New York	128.0	127.3	-0.7	-0.5

Source: BLS Metro Areas report, October 29, 2014.

In New Jersey, the state capital, as in New York State, gained jobs but growth was weaker in the rest of the state. Atlantic City remains in economic crisis, losing 7.2 percent of its jobs, 10,000 of them, in the year ending September 2014.

For cities, density remains destiny. The bigger cities survive economic downturns best, and so do state capitals, where the state taxes go.

NYC TAXES | Plucking the Golden Geese

March 10, 2009–French Finance Minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the second after Fouquet to serve under Louis XIV, said that the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.

The golden geese in New York City are the top 1 percent of NYC taxpayers, the 41,282 filers earning $500,000 or more. They pay 47.8 percent of the $7.3 billion collected by the city in income taxes. The concentration of golden feathers is much greater now than in 1993, when approximately the same share of taxes, 47.6 percent, was paid by more than five times as large a share of taxpayers, the 5.5 percent earning $100,000 or more.

Why has the concentration of taxpayers become so much more intense? Three explanations come to mind: (1) Inflation ($100,000 ain’t worth what it was in 1993). (2) The financial bubble, which in recent years was good to top-earning New Yorkers. (3) The number of NYC personal income-tax filers, which has increased to 4.1 million from 2.7 million in 1990.

One thing hasn’t changed much–average personal income tax rates in Manhattan are higher than in the other boroughs. Back in 1993, the average effective tax rate was 3.05 percent–3.58 percent in Manhattan and less than 3 percent in all of the other four boroughs.

NY City and NY State officials are seeking to raise tax rates further on the highest categories of personal incomes. Council Speaker Christine Quinn has proposed boosting the city's income tax from 3.65 to 4.25 percent for those earning $297,000 or more; to 4.45 percent for those making $532,000 and to 4.65 percent (a percentage-point increase) for the $1.2 million league and above. Comptroller Bill Thompson is supporting higher taxes for the top category.

Albany legislators are also seeking to raise the state income tax -- from 6.85 percent to 8.25 percent for people making a minimum of $250,000; 8.97 percent for those making $500,000 and above in taxable income and 10.3 percent for those at the $1-million-and-up level.

NYC’s budget director, Mark Page, has argued that the City’s golden geese have wings and can fly. He says:

The basic concern is how do you collect revenue from New York City's tax base if you have a relatively small group of individuals paying a very large proportion of your income-tax revenue.

A consoling fact for New Yorkers is that state and local taxes have been deductible against income on which federal taxes are imposed. But there is a question about what new tax rules will emerge from the budget debate that is taking place in Washington.

TECH | NYS Underperforms

How should one monitor the progress of a state's competitiveness in the stakes for future tech jobs?

One way is to look at the data for federal grants for Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), which is a way to bring research dollars to a state at the same time as one is building a stable of ponies for future venture-capital bets.

New York City’s Silicon Alley (in conjunction with its more hardware-oriented cousin techspots up the Hudson Valley from Poughkeepsie to Albany and elsewhere in the state) likes to think of itself as #3 after Silicon Valley and Route 128, and a recent ITAC report seeks to make something out of the fact that in the total number of tech jobs, the NYC metro area ranks ahead even of Silicon Valley and Greater Boston. The sheer size of the NYC metro area is what seems to put NYC ahead on the ITAC count. It is certainly true that having a lot of tech jobs in the NYC area is important in creating critical mass for future innovation. But density of tech jobs is surely more important for creating an environment conducive to serendipity, and the other important ingredient is effective leadership from the governor's office.

These factors go a long way to explain why NY State performs so poorly on the number of SBIR awards in FY 2006. New York was in eighth place in FY 2005 as well, so the rank is not an accident of the year 2006. As expected by the conventional wisdom, California ranks #1 with 725 grants and Massachusetts is #2 with 466 grants. But between these two front-runners and NY State (with only 163 grants) are five interlopers: Virginia (221), Texas (176), Colorado (173), Maryland (169) and Ohio (167). The strength of Virginia and Maryland on this list could reflect the proximity of their Beltway components both to agency grant-makers and to the Army and Navy research labs. Texas may also have benefited from its having a former governor in the White House for nearly six years.

But Colorado and Ohio ranking higher than the Empire State? I was mystified and am grateful to my friend David Hochman for helping me understand why they are doing better than NY State. Colorado doesn't have aggressive tech programs at the state level but it has several large Commerce Department (NIST and NOAA) and DOE labs, and in addition, for a range of historic reasons a really vibrant (high-density) tech community around Boulder and Longmont. Ohio has not only the Air Force labs and a significant NASA Center but also an unusual state program called the "Third Frontier" Project, a.k.a. the Ohio Research Commercialization Grant Program (felicitously acronymed ORCGP). This program, which has no direct parallel in NY State, provides aggressive support for institutions attempting to obtain federal grants.

Between 2005 and 2006, Michigan (with Detroit in a near-depression status because of the decline of the U.S. auto industry) dropped off the top ten list and was replaced by Washington (home of Microsoft, 91 grants). In ninth place is Pennsylvania with 133 grants.

Since Governor Eliot Spitzer was not in charge in FY2006, these numbers do not reflect on his current administration. We can hope that New York moves up in the rankings in future.