The Mandate Relief Team (PDF) has come out with its final report.

"Mandates" basically encompass anything the state makes towns, villages, cities and counties do. Unfunded mandates are a particularly pernicious strain of the mandate condition.

Every year, local governments clamor for what's called mandate relief, the Pepto, of sorts, for the litany of mandate maladies. But, year after year, they continue to suffer without relief.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo promised to change that, putting into motion the Mandate Relief Team. The team has made its final recommendations.

Here's a big one: a constitutional ban on "unfunded mandates."

The problem with that, of course, is that the state will still write mandates, but call it something else. Remember when the federal government banned earmarks?

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