Illustration: Jeff Hopkins.
Fiscal year 2010 Medicaid spending by the fifty states, excluding administrative costs, exceeded $389 billion dollars. New York State led the states in total spending at $52 billion dollars. Medicaid costs are now the largest driver of state and local spending in New York State. Recent changes in State law have helped reduce the local costs, but Medicaid continues to dominate State and local expenses.
Congress in 1965 established Medicaid under Title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide health insurance for the nation’s indigent population. It is an entitlement program, meaning that anyone who meets statutory eligibility requirements is entitled to Medicaid benefits. Over the years Congress has expanded Medicaid eligibility to include working families, primary care, family planning services, hospital services, home health care and related transportation services. Medicaid filled the void for millions of Americans who did not have access to private health insurance, but did so at great cost to state and local budgets. (read more…)
Amy Loprest, Campaign Finance Board Executive Director. Image Credit: CFB.
The dramatic suicide of Queens Borough President Donald Manes in 1986 shocked the City. Manes was under investigation in the Parking Violations Bureau ticket collection scandal when he drove a knife through his heart while talking on the phone with his psychiatrist. It was out of this scandal-plagued era that the City’s Campaign Finance Board was born. A joint City-State Commission to combat corruption organized by Mayor Ed Koch and Governor Mario Cuomo recommended public financing of elections as its top priority. The City then created an independent non-partisan Campaign Finance Board and charged it with implementing and enforcing the City’s new system of publicly funded elections.
Amy Loprest, the Campaign Finance Board’s current Executive Director, says that many campaign finance laws across the globe have been the result of scandal. After receiving her undergraduate degree in finance and public policy management from the University of Pennsylvania, Loprest began her career as the Assistant Director of the City’s Deferred Compensation Program. Wanting to be involved in public policy and politics, when Loprest saw an opportunity to work at the Campaign Finance Board in the fall of 1990, she took it. She left the CFB to attend Fordham’s School of Law, but returned to a legal position with the CFB in 1999 to continue working in public service.
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Illustration by Jeff Hopkins.
New York State’s voter turnout in the 2012 presidential election was 47th best in the country. It is difficult to discern the cause of low turnout, but there is no question that changes in election procedures could make voting less difficult and encourage turnout.
The manner in which a state conducts and regulates its elections determines whether voting will be easy or hard. Each state determines its election rules, even when electing a President. The United States constitution permits Congress to override the state-driven process by enacting federal laws governing elections, but Congress has done so sparingly, as, for example, in the Voting Rights Act. So how is New York doing in encouraging voting, and what should the State do to improve?
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Illustration: Jeff Hopkins.
Sign installation in New York City triggers regulations governing location, size, illumination, and construction. The New York City Building Code and the New York City Zoning Resolution are the two main bodies of law governing signs in New York City. The Building Code regulates the construction and maintenance of signs, such as permissible construction materials, and is primarily concerned with public health and safety. The Zoning Resolution, while implicating issues of public health and safety, also encompasses aesthetic considerations. Restrictions on the size, height, surface area, and illumination of a sign are intended to promote a distinctive look in that zoning district, while striking a balance between the desires of society and the rights of property owners. For example, an illuminated sign that may be a desirable tourist attraction in Times Square, becomes a nuisance in a residential neighborhood.
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