Local sales tax collections in New York State increased by 1.6% in February compared to the same month in 2023. Overall, local collections totaled $1.67 billion, up $26.8 million from the same time last year.
New York’s higher education sector is facing challenges, including a looming enrollment cliff, growing costs of attendance, and rising student debt. This report provides critical indicators on the competitiveness of higher education institutions, explains their major challenges, and offers recommendations for consideration. Keeping New York’s higher education institutions competitive by ensuring their affordability, diversity and spirit of innovation and community is important for our State’s future.
Better-than-projected revenues and planned cost savings benefited New York City’s budget outlook for Fiscal Year 2025, but outyear budget gaps remain large due to the end of federal pandemic aid and a lack of federal funding to support asylum seeker costs. Additional City funding for education and social services programs that support working-class families may be needed if those programs will be maintained at current levels in the future.
Local sales tax collections in New York State increased by 0.3% in January compared to the same month in 2023. Overall, local collections totaled nearly $1.9 billion, up $4.8 million from the same time last year.
After the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the State’s finances have stabilized, and the Division of the Budget is now forecasting reduced budget gaps. In addition, the Executive Budget includes a new proposal to severely restrict the State Comptroller’s terms and conditions approval of certain State bond issuances. This critical oversight and approval role protects taxpayers from short-sighted financing decisions that too often burden taxpayers with debt that is risky and costly.
For almost 3 million New Yorkers, housing costs constitute more than 30 percent of household income, with 1 in 5 households experiencing a severe cost burden of more than 50 percent of their income going to pay for housing. This report is the third and final report in the “New Yorkers in Need” series. It examines three categories of housing insecurity: high housing costs; physical inadequacy, including overcrowding and substandard conditions; and housing stress, including evictions and foreclosures, which may result in homelessness.
