The Biden White House has reversed course on two major policies in the first week of August. During an August 3 press conference, President Joe Biden conceded that when it comes to extending the Centers for Disease Control’s temporary eviction moratorium, “the bulk of the constitutional scholars say it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster.” The President said that one day after Gene Sperling, the White House’s federal coronavirus response coordinator, told reporters that they couldn’t find legal justification for the moratorium.

When the pandemic shut down the city’s economy in March 2020, movie and TV production became one big closed set.



But in contrast to many other entertainment-related sectors — including restaurants, tourism and especially Broadway — big-and-small-screen show business is nearly back to pre-pandemic levels.



At Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, eight productions are at work, the maximum the studio can handle. It’s the same story in Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, fully booked with six to eight productions in any given recent week.

The next mayor's challenge checklist

Brad Lander, the Democratic candidate for city comptroller, wants to pump more of the city’s $265 billion of pension assets into apartments for poor and working-class residents, invest in rooftop solar panels and lend to small enterprises owned by women and minorities.


But his ambition to use the pension money to invest in the five boroughs is certain to bump up against the law and economic reality. Trustees of New York’s five retirement plans, including the mayor and comptroller, have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize returns for retirees while limiting risk. That means they can’t provide below-market financing.

Still, this high-profile industry faces new challenges as states throughout the country ratchet up tax incentives to lure productions at a time New York’s program is less popular than it has been in years in some influential circles. Groups from the Citizens Budget Commission to the conservative Empire Center to the progressive Fiscal Policy Institute have railed against the tax break.

Brad Lander, the Democratic candidate for New York City comptroller, wants to pump more of the city’s $265 billion of pension assets into apartments for poor and working-class residents, invest in rooftop solar panels and lend to small enterprises owned by women and minorities.

On July 31, the national moratorium on evictions, which the Centers for Disease Control put into place as part of its statutory authority to "make and enforce such regulations as in [its] judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases," expired. Millions of Americans faced eviction after job loss during the pandemic left them behind on rent.

Actually, saying that the eviction moratorium "expired" doesn't do justice to what happened. The moratorium was killed by the United States Supreme Court's conservative majority. They ignored the federal agency's clear statutory authority and ruled, 5-4, that the CDC lacked the power to issue a national order halting evictions.

Despite an improving fiscal picture that includes higher bond ratings, New York City faces risks as it emerges from the darkest days of the pandemic, state and city fiscal watchdogs said.

Those risks include the emerging of the COVID-19 Delta variant, the need for unspecified labor savings and a five-year capital program that might not be sustainable, said Michelle McManus, deputy director of the New York State Financial Control Board.

Sales tax revenue collected by counties — a signal of economic strength as well as the critical source of funds to avoid property tax increases — is rising sharply on Long Island and statewide, but the post-pandemic recovery remains uncertain, state and independent analysts told Newsday.



Muddying the economic outlook is that the rise in revenue from sales is bolstered in part by what may be temporarily high gasoline prices, a sharp increase in housing prices, billions of dollars in federal pandemic aid to governments and businesses and pent-up consumer demand, analysts said

“It hurt New York’s competiveness – it made it more expensive to live in New York than a lower tax state,” Citizens Budget Commission President Andrew Rein said Thursday. “When the federal government capped it at $10,000, people whose state and local taxes exceeded $10,000 lost a value of that and suddenly had to pay a greater amount of federal taxes.”

Of all the catastrophes that have hit New York in the past 100 years, COVID-19 was much different with more unknowns that made fiscal planning all the more complex, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s budget director.

New York’s economic competitiveness would improve after the repeal of the federal State and Local Tax deduction cap, state budget experts said Thursday, after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reiterated pleas to the state’s congressional delegation to abolish the 2017 tax change.