Getting a Grip on the State Budget
- Reduce projected spending
- Roll back tax increases
- Move the fiscal year start date to July 1
- Mind the GAAP
- Establish a Legislative Budget Office
- Shut the borrowing backdoor
- Ban lump sum appropriations
- Enforce financial plan deadlines
Restoring Public Safety
- Make public safety the central concern of pretrial release decisions
- Restore balance in criminal prosecutions.
- Mitigate the unintended, if predictable, consequences of “Less Is More”
Rethinking K-12 Education—and Beyond
- Expand school choice
- Rein in and redirect school spending
- Align graduation and proficiency standards with real-world needs and expectations
- Expand community college trade and workforce preparation program
- Reform educational governance to build accountability
Medicaid and health care
- Make commercial coverage more affordable and accessible
- Tighten income-screening procedures for Medicaid enrollees
- Improve the state’s public health system
Addressing Mental Health
- Fund more inpatient psychiatric beds
- Target workforce investments to areas of greatest need
- Expand Kendra’s Law
- Increase supervision of the seriously mentally Ill
- Reduce the mental illness burden on other systems
Heading off New York’s Home-Made Energy Crisis
- Scrap the current Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act
- End the de facto natural gas pipeline moratorium
- Repeal the fracking ban
- Rethink renewable and zero-emission energy credits
- Repeal the post-2035 ban on selling new internal combustion engines
- Stop legislation likely to further increase costs and undermine reliability
- Encourage investment in hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and advanced nuclear power
Transportation and Transit: Back to Basics
- Reconsider priorities for highway spending
- Identify highway funding sources before spending
- Link tolls to reasonable costs
- Reset dedicated taxes
- Adopt a more realistic MTA capital plan
- Rethink the Penn Station project
- Control transit and commuter rail labor costs
- Push for more transparent, productive capital contracts
- Find substitutes for fuel taxes
- Make a fast, final decision on congestion pricing
- Appoint independent experts to the MTA board
Housing New York
- Reverse rent regulation
- Encourage New Private Housing Development
- Reform and Repurpose Public Housing
- Cut red tape barriers to housing construction
Taming a “Taylor Made” Public-Sector Workforce
- Make collective bargaining more transparent
- Rejuvenate PERB to focus on the broad public interest
- Repeal the Triborough Amendment
- Set limits on binding arbitration settlements
- Limit the scope of collective bargaining
Opening a Wider Window on New York Government
- Set firmer deadlines for FOIL responses
- Improve the dispute resolution process
- Fix bad judicial and administrative FOIL precedents
- Increase access to public meetings
- Define “meetings” in 21st century terms
Voters Access, Election Integrity
- Require voters to provide proof of identification
- Reaffirm and strengthen absentee balloting restrictions
- Prevent ballot harvesting
- Scale back the nine-day early voting period
- Repeal the John Lewis Voting Rights Act
- Reject public campaigning financing
- Create a path for limited citizen initiative and referendum