Author: Mary Pat Campbell

DiNapoli: State’s Fiscal Picture Has Improved, but Impact of Pandemic Revenue Losses Will Linger

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/2021/03/dinapoli-states-fiscal-picture-has-improved-impact-pandemic-revenue-losses-will-linger

Excerpt:

New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli today said there are some positive developments for the state’s fiscal recovery from the pandemic, including higher than expected personal income tax collections and the prospect of significant aid from the federal government, in his review of the Executive Budget for State Fiscal Year (SFY) 2021-22, as amended by the Governor. However, risks remain and could threaten the state’s fragile improvement.

DiNapoli urged the Governor and the Legislature to avoid short-sighted choices when adopting the new budget, to maintain transparency and include oversight measures. He recommended that actions be taken to address the state’s long-term structural imbalance and put the state’s finances on a sustainable path once emergency federal aid ends.

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 2 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller

DiNapoli: State Pension Fund Calls on Companies to Address Climate Risk, Transition to Cleaner Operations

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/press/releases/2021/03/dinapoli-state-pension-fund-calls-companies-address-climate-risk-transition-cleaner-operations

Excerpt:

The New York State Common Retirement Fund (Fund) has reached agreements with five major U.S. companies, including Domino’s Pizza Inc., to set targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), adopt new energy efficiency measures and increase their use of renewable energy, New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli, trustee of the Fund, announced today. In response to the agreements, the Fund withdrew the shareholder resolutions with the companies.

“More and more companies understand that addressing climate change, by reducing their carbon emissions, helps their long-term success and benefits investors,” DiNapoli said. “The transition to a low carbon future and meeting our country’s renewed commitment to the Paris Agreement present enormous opportunities for smart, sustainable investments. My thanks to these companies for recognizing their role in building a lower-carbon economy and their responsibility to shareholders’ concerns about climate risk.”

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York State Comptroller

New York Unemployment Claims Show a Year of Economic Devastation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/impact-covid-19-march-4-2021

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Immediately before the pandemic hit New York, for weeks ending in late February and early March 2020, statewide UI claims averaged around 167,000. Those claims almost doubled to over 314,000, as the shutdown went into effect, starting a weeks-long upward spike that reached more than 3.1 million in mid-May. The historic peak of nearly 3.4 million claimants came in the last week of May 2020. The totals from May onward include claimants under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program (PUA) which provides benefits to individuals not traditionally eligible for unemployment assistance because of self-employment or certain other reasons. (Due to the PUA and other factors, the numbers of workers claiming unemployment benefits differ from the count of those officially counted as unemployed, which peaked in New York State at 1.5 million or 15.9 percent of the labor force in July 2020.)

The longstanding, regular State program of UI benefits funded by employer contributions was the only source of benefits for the first six weeks shown in the graph and continued to fund the largest numbers of claims into early August. (These payments were supplemented by additional federally funded benefits of $600 or $300 weekly for much, though not all, of the period shown.)

Author(s): Thomas DiNapoli

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: Office of the New York Comproller

Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax won’t work. This will

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://money.yahoo.com/elizabeth-warrens-wealth-tax-wont-work-this-will-200020382.html

Excerpt:

Biden also wants other big tax changes, such as a higher business tax rate and higher rates for households earning more than $400,000. But he might want to start with capital-gains and estate taxes because they’re easier to target at the wealthy. The top 1% of earners capture 69% of long-term capital gains, while the top 20% of earners earn 90% of the capital gains. That shareholder class has benefited most from fiscal and monetary stimulus that has propped up the stock market for the last 11 months and helped with a decade of generous gains. If anybody can afford it, they can.

As for the estate tax, only about 1,900 U.S. estates are subject to any federal tax, which is less than one-tenth of 1% of the Americans who die in a given year. The number of estates subject to this tax was three times higher in 2009, the last year the exemption threshold was $3.5 million. Since Biden wants to return to that ceiling, assume he’d triple the number of families having to pay some estate tax. It still remains a vanishingly small number. Plus, unlike the wealth tax, it has been the law before, and there’s no question of whether it would work.

Author(s): Rick Newman

Publication Date: 2 March 2021

Publication Site: Yahoo Finance

Senate Narrowly Passes $1.9 Trillion COVID Stimulus Bill

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nationalreview.com/news/senate-narrowly-passes-1-9-trillion-covid-stimulus-bill/

Excerpt:

The Senate voted 50-49 to pass Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on Saturday, after a marathon session of voting on various amendments.

The bill was passed via budget reconciliation rules, which allow a simple majority to approve legislation in place of a filibuster-proof 60-vote threshold. The Biden administration had been pushing to pass the legislation before the week of March 14, when pandemic-related federal unemployment assistance is scheduled to expire.

The vote occurred entirely on partisan lines. Senator Dan Sullivan (R., Alaska) returned to his home state on Friday to attend the funeral of his father-in-law, meaning Vice President Kamala Harris did not need to cast a tie-breaking vote.

Author(s): ZACHARY EVANS

Publication Date: 6 March 2021

Publication Site: National Review

CDC Launches New COVID Vaccine Finder Tool

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/health-fitness/cdc-covid-vaccine-finder-tool/

Excerpt:

With news that the single dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine has met U.S. Food and Drug Administration requirements, vaccination is once again front and center in many Americans’ minds.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a vaccine finder tool to help you locate vaccine distribution sites. The tool populates the name, address and phone number of pharmacies and stores within a one to 50-mile radius of your zip code.

At this time, users can search for the Moderna, Pfizer-BioNTech and/or Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen COVID vaccines and see whether specific locations are in or out of stock.

Author(s): DALLAS ERNST

Publication Date: 26 February 2021

Publication Site: AAA

Too Many Smart People Are Being Too Dismissive of Inflation

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/opinion/fed-inflation-markets.html

Excerpt:

That assistance should also be more concentrated on where the need exists. According to Bloomberg, California’s revenues for this fiscal year are roughly 10 percent greater than expected (partly a result of soaring technology company valuations), while general-fund revenue in New York is estimated to be 11.7 percent lower than prepandemic forecasts.

And we should take a fine-toothed comb to lesser-known wasteful provisions, like giveaways to the airlines and an indirect bailout (added by the House) of multiemployer pension funds. Some of the money that we save by trimming the American Rescue Plan Act can be reallocated to one of our most pressing needs: infrastructure. Those funds get spent more slowly (and because of that put less immediate pressure on prices) and have the critical effect of helping to improve our unimpressive productivity growth rate.

Wasting precious dollars that could be better spent can’t possibly be worth the risk of igniting high inflation again.

Author(s): Steven Rattner

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: New York Times

Montana Teacher Retirement System Pension Solvency Analysis

Mary Pat Campbell
Montana Teacher Retirement System Pension Solvency Analysis

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The latest analysis by the Pension Integrity Project at Reason Foundation, updated this month (February 2021), shows that deviations from the plan’s investment return assumptions have been the largest contributor to the unfunded liability, adding $897 million since 2002. The analysis also shows that failing to meet investment targets will likely be a problem for TRS going forward, as projections reveal the pension plan has roughly a 50 percent chance of meeting their 7.5 percent assumed rate of investment return in both the short and long term.

In recent years TRS has also made necessary adjustments to various actuarial assumptions, exposing over $400 million in previously unrecognized unfunded liabilities. The overall growth in unfunded liabilities has driven Montana’s pension benefit costs higher while crowding out other education spending priorities in the state, like classroom programming and teacher pay raises.

The chart below, from the full solvency analysis, shows the increase in the Montana Teacher Retirement System’s debt since 2002:

Author(s): Jen Sidorova, Swaroop Bhagavatula, Steven Gassenberger, Leonard Gilroy

Publication Date: 1 March 2021

Publication Site: Reason

Senate passes $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill, including $1,400 stimulus checks, with no Republican support

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-passes-1-9-trillion-covid-relief-bill-including-1-n1259795

Excerpt:

The Senate passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package Saturday, capping off a marathon overnight session after Democrats resolved internal clashes that threatened to derail President Joe Biden’s top legislative priority.

The far-reaching legislation includes $1,400 stimulus checks, $300-per-week jobless benefits through the summer, a child allowance of up to $3,600 for one year, $350 billion for state aid, $34 billion to expand Affordable Care Act subsidies and $14 billion for vaccine distribution.

The final vote was 50-49 along party lines, with every Republican voting “no.” It came after Democrats voted down a swath of Republican amendments on repeated votes of 50-49 to avoid disrupting the delicate agreement between progressive and moderate senators.

Author(s): Sahil Kapur

Publication Date: 6 March 2021

Publication Site: NBC News

Why reopening US schools is so complicated

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/05/1020304/reopening-us-schools-complicated/

Excerpt:

The US can look to Europe for how this played out: European countries tried in-person learning last fall but began closing schools as B.1.1.7 swept through the continent. By December, countries including the Netherlands and Germany had shut down their schools in the face of rising case numbers. The CDC says it may need to update school reopening guidelines in light of new information about variants. 

This task is made more difficult because tracking the spread of variants in the US is tough right now. Compared with other countries, it has very few labs doing this work, and while more funding will help, Friedrich says there will still be a gap.

Author(s): Mia Sato

Publication Date: 5 March 2021

Publication Site: MIT Technology Review

Restaurants and other business can go back to full capacity on March 19 as Lamont rolls back COVID restrictions in CT

Mary Pat Campbell
Restaurants and other business can go back to full capacity on March 19 as Lamont rolls back COVID restrictions in CT

Graphic:

Excerpt:

Gov. Ned Lamont said Thursday that Connecticut will eliminate capacity limits on restaurants, houses of worship, retailers and most businesses on March 19 but will retain mandates for social distancing and masks as a precaution against a resurgence of COVID-19.

The rollback comes as about 60% of Connecticut residents 65 and older have been vaccinated against the coronavirus, helping to drive down hospitalizations, new infections and deaths to their lowest point in 2021, though still higher than last summer.

The governor’s announcement was expected. It comes after Texas, Mississippi and three other states took more aggressive steps to end mask mandates and business restrictions, a move denounced as premature by President Joe Biden.

Author(s): MARK PAZNIOKAS, JENNA CARLESSO

Publication Date: 4 March 2021

Publication Site: CT Mirror