Can New York, Facing Billions of Dollars in Budget Gaps, Afford Reparations?

As the clock begins ticking for New York’s reparations commission to create a report of recommendations to address what Governor Hochul calls the state’s “legacy of slavery” and its “lingering negative effects” on New Yorkers, one question will be whether the state can afford forms of paid reparations.  “The state doesn’t have extra money lying around to do something like this,” the director of research at the Empire Center for Public Policy, Ken Girardin, tells the Sun. “Folks will say we can always raise taxes higher, and we’re already seeing erosion in the state’s tax base now that the state has the highest combined top tax rate in the nation.”  While it’s not yet clear what recommendations New York’s commission will come up with in the next year — and whether those proposals will include cash payments — Ms. Hochul has said that reparations “mean more than giving people a simple apology 150 years later.”  When signing legislation to create the commission, Ms. Hochul acknowledged she had some “concerns” about it but said taking action was necessary as “white supremacism is alive and well in this country.”  Ms. Hochul’s office did not immediately respond to a request from the Sun...