After withdrawing nearly identical proposed legislation one day earlier, on January 18, 2012, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issued an Executive Order directing certain New York State agencies, including the Department of Health, to promulgate regulations that limit the compensation of executives of entities that receive state funding or payments from the state. Such regulations must be promulgated within ninety days of the date of the Executive Order.

The Executive Order calls for an overall compensation limit of $199,999 per executive, but that limit may be adjusted by each agency with the approval of the Director of the Budget, provided that the compensation does not exceed Level I of the Federal government executive compensation guidelines promulgated by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (“OPM”). Further, the operative sentence calling for a compensation limit is qualified by the phrase “to the extent practicable.”