In the Hudson Valley, county legislator Lisa Kaul, who’s said she “entered electoral politics because I really wanted to do something about climate change,” flipped a Republican-held Senate seat.

In the Buffalo area, democratic socialist Adam Bojak — a housing rights lawyer who wants to build green public housing and expand transit — won an Assembly seat.

And across the state, candidates rode a tide of anger over energy-hungry data centers and high utility bills to oust incumbents. 

Altogether, at least 15 incoming Senate and Assembly members campaigned explicitly on climate issues, according to a New York Focus tally. About a dozen championed greater public control of the energy system — through building more publicly owned wind and solar, taking over local utilities, or both.  

They will be entering Albany at a rocky time for the state’s energy transition. President Donald Trump has stymied New York’s plans to build offshore wind, and the repeal of federal clean energy tax credits is throttling efforts to build renewables on land, too. Governor Kathy Hochul pushed through a major rollback of New York’s flagship climate law earlier this year, saying Trump’s policies made it impossible to meet the state’s targets.

Will the new green cohort be able to move the needle on Albany climate debates? Some advocates think so.

The New York League of Conservation Voters, one of the state’s most prominent environmental groups, declared a “green wave.” More than 95 percent of the group’s endorsed candidates won their races, according to its tally. 

“This is a repudiation of Trump’s energy policy … the fossil fuel–only approach, as opposed to really building out the clean energy that you need to help stabilize energy prices,” said the group’s president, Julie Tighe. 

Brown University researchers estimate that high gasoline prices have cost New Yorkers an extra $3.3 billion since the start of the Iran war. “It’s a real wake-up call that we don’t need to be on this fossil fuel rollercoaster ride,” Tighe said. 

It was that anger over the spiraling cost of living — not climate change — that defined the elections. But a growing number of politicians, both nationally and across New York, see the solutions as intertwined. 

“The climate crisis is at the heart of our affordability crisis,” said Kaul, the Hudson Valley senator-elect. “It’s really about whether we can afford to deal with extreme weather events that are damaging infrastructure.” 

On the campaign trail, she blamed climate change for driving up the costs of roads and bridges, insurance, and food, and accused the electric and gas utility Central Hudson of “fleecing us.” Her answer? “Affordable solar power on every roof” and higher state subsidies to defray the upfront costs of electric vehicles and heat pumps. 

In addition to Kaul, at least four other incoming lawmakers want to expand access to community solar. About the same number have voiced support for “cap and invest” — a carbon pricing program that was at the heart of New York’s climate plan, but that Hochul has put on ice. 

Albany’s growing caucus of democratic socialists has its own policy priorities, including state support for green retrofits of schools — a top item for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani — and stronger implementation of the Build Public Renewables Act. Several are championing a bill that would enact a public takeover of Central Hudson, and at least two have floated a similar push for Con Edison. 

Assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, who sponsors the bill to take over Central Hudson, said the election results reflected wider public pressure to take profit out of the energy system. She campaigned alongside Kaul — not a DSA endorsee — who has called the Central Hudson bill a priority.

Shrestha said an expanded progressive bloc could set the tone for the wider Democratic conference.

“The small group of progressives have always been very effective at setting the agenda,” she said. “We expect that to be obviously more impactful going in next year.”

Perhaps the most unifying theme on the campaign trails, though, was data centers.

Nyack mayor and senator-elect Joe Rand, who unseated GOP incumbent Bill Weber, backed a data center moratorium bill this spring that his opponent voted against. He won by eight points. 

DSA endorsee Adam Bojak, of Buffalo, said his campaign had its most viral moment with a social media clip declaring, “F*ck AI. NO data centers.” 

Bojak also took Hochul to task in his campaign platform for weakening New York’s climate law this spring. But it appears Hochul’s climate gamble did not hurt her electorally.

A pair of influential green groups spent more than $500,000 supporting her this fall after fighting her bitterly over the rollbacks. That’s even as Hochul has over the past year espoused an “all of the above” energy strategy — including approving new gas infrastructure — that much of the climate movement sees as incompatible with the state’s emissions targets. 

Asked whether she felt vindicated in that approach after her 20-point win over GOP challenger Bruce Blakeman, her office said it was a necessary response to Trump’s war on renewables. 

“The Governor remains firmly committed to keeping New York’s status as a clean energy and climate leader while also open to projects that can enhance our grid capacity as long as they meet all required state laws and regulations,” said Hochul spokesperson Ken Lovett in an email. 

New lawmakers with their own ambitions on clean energy will have to contend with Hochul’s tight grip over this arena. Most of the big items currently at play are in the governor’s court. 

The one-year data center moratorium that passed the legislature this June is awaiting her signature or veto. Meanwhile, she issued her own version over the summer, asking her energy regulators to study the facilities’ impacts on the grid and environment. It’s not clear where she stands on the legislature’s version, which would give her environmental agency a stronger role in controlling pollution from the facilities; Hochul said Tuesday that she’ll give it a “very thoughtful review.”

Then there’s cap and invest, which was supposed to anchor New York’s efforts to cut emissions. After this spring’s climate law rollbacks, the state has a new 2028 deadline to enact a plan for meeting its targets — and a resurrected cap and invest program remains the top candidate. The legislature put Hochul’s agencies in charge of the process, and she has given no indication yet of whether she plans to reboot it in the new year. 

Vanessa Fajans-Turner, executive director of Environmental Advocates NY, hopes pressure from incoming members will help get the plan back on track. 

“The anti–special interest backlash we’re seeing does support the cap and invest model, which is to make polluters pay for energy transitions and rising energy costs,” she said.

“There’s a really big, exciting window of opportunity here,” Fajans-Turner added. “There are a lot of new leaders … who are going to be really strong allies.” 

The legislature will have more of a say in other arenas. The past two state budgets have each allocated $1 billion for clean energy funding. Leading green groups want to hike that to $3 billion, on par with what a cap and invest program is supposed to raise. 

All four incoming legislators reached by New York Focus for this story voiced support for renewing or increasing the state’s clean energy spending.

On thornier debates, though, at least one incoming lawmaker said it’s too early to draw hard lines. 

Senator-elect Sarah Rogerson, a Saratoga-area Democrat, campaigned on “major investments in clean, affordable energy,” and unseated the longest-serving sitting member of the legislature. She said Hochul’s all-of-the-above approach made sense. 

“​​I do think it’s smart to take a look at every option and to not take any off the table immediately,” she said. 

But Rogerson, a law professor who has lately been studying climate migration, says she won’t be downplaying climate change, as many Democrats have done since Trump’s election. 

“This is an issue that’s really, really a top priority for especially a lot of younger voters,” she said. “It also requires elected officials to prioritize it.”

Bojak, who has two children under the age of five, was more emphatic. 

“These fights are existential and we are not going to back down on the things that are going to keep this planet alive,” he said.

After Zamar retired from two decades of military service in 2017, he started a medical transportation business. Amy got a master’s degree and began working as a therapist. They bought a house in 2021, in Dexter, New York, a few miles from the Canadian border, and moved out of the military housing they had been renting in nearby Fort Drum.

But when Zamar’s chronic kidney issues turned into full-blown organ failure, the crisis threatened to undo all their effort. He had to give up his business, and Amy cut back her therapy hours to care for him. They fell thousands of dollars behind on phone and electric bills, and had to refinance their mortgage at a steeper rate. 

Amy qualified as a kidney donor for her ailing husband, but the costs associated with the operation and her recovery time threatened to push the family thousands of dollars further into debt.

In the past, there would have been no alternative. But several years ago, state lawmakers passed legislation to reimburse organ donors’ medical and recovery costs. In a state with one of the longest waitlists for donation, they hoped to make it possible for more families, friends and strangers to volunteer.  After the law passed in 2022, however, it faced years of bureaucratic delays, detailed by New York Focus.

No longer. The Living Donor Support Program launched last year, and has already approved over 240 applications — more than twice the number health department officials were expecting.

The Turner family is one of them. The program covered Amy’s missed paychecks, travel expenses to and from the hospital in Rochester, and the cost of having Amy’s sister come from Maine to help care for them during recovery. 

“It helped a lot,” Amy said. “It filled the gap on not having our electric turned off.”

The program allows organ donors to claim up to $14,000 in reimbursements from the state to cover costs like lost wages, travel, and caretakers.

In its first year, the program paid out more than $714,000 in reimbursements, according to a health department spokesperson. 

Program staff were only expecting 100 applications in the first year, so getting more than twice that number kept them very busy, said health department employee Loretta Mosher, one of three staffers devoted full-time to the Living Donor Support Program. 

Mosher joined the department of health in 2024 specifically to help launch the program. She had spent the previous 20 years as a hospital nurse, sometimes witnessing organ donation up close.

“Working in the emergency room, you see a lot of people who are donors,” she told New York Focus. “You just gain a really deep respect for it.”

Now, she spends all day corresponding with donors and the 15 transplant centers that coordinate the procedures around New York state. Mosher and her colleagues try to respond to all applications and reimbursement claims within a day. 

Donors and their families seem to appreciate the work. “Probably weekly, there’s emails back to us thanking us,” she said. Mosher and her team hope to grow the program by 10 percent per year.

At least one New Yorker has expressed his appreciation directly to Governor Kathy Hochul, who signed the program into law in late 2022.

During Hochul’s recent visit to a kosher supermarket in Queens, a man who said he had donated his kidney to a stranger thanked her for signing the bill.

“I got to give my kidney to someone I don’t know. You gave me this check,” the man said while holding up a check, according to jns.org. “You’re the only governor who has a law like that.”

While other countries such as New Zealand and Israel have similar programs, which have been found to boost donation rates, New York is the only state that reimburses organ donors.

Kidney issues had dogged Zamar for years before the organ totally failed. Several years before he retired from the military — where he served in Iraq, Korea, and Okinawa — he found out he had diseased and low-functioning kidneys, but he shrugged it off

“That’s the mentality you develop when you’re in the military,” he said. “Someone tells you you’re sick, you’re kind of like okay, whatever.”

But last year, chronic vomiting and back pain forced him back to the hospital, where he learned his kidneys were failing, and that he would need to start dialysis. It was a brutal process: He would get crippling cramps, often couldn’t sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, and at one point needed surgery to remove an infected catheter.

While Zamar was on dialysis, Amy was undergoing testing to see if she could be his kidney donor. After several rounds, she learned in April that she was a match. They set the surgery date for July, after their son Devon’s high school graduation.

As they prepared for the transplant, a member of the hospital’s staff told Amy about the Living Donor Support Program, and suggested that she apply. Initially Amy wasn’t interested — it just seemed like one more bureaucratic task to deal with. But as the transplant date approached, their financial struggles mounted. When a hospital employee mentioned the program again, she decided to apply and was approved right away. 

Two weeks after she began submitting claims, she started getting reimbursement checks in the mail. A Department of Health staff member quickly responded to any questions that came up.

“It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be,” Amy said. “It’s just really a couple pieces of paper.”

The roughly $3,000 the Turners ultimately received from the program was far less than the $14,000 cap, but it was enough to make a real dent in the bills that had piled up while Zamar was sick. 

“The smoke has cleared up,” Amy said. “We’ll get there eventually.”

Zamar is still recovering from the transplant surgery, but he can already feel the difference. He’s started doing a bit of yard work again, and recently went out to lunch with his family for the first time in about a year. Most importantly, he’s able to stay awake rather than sleeping for half the day, as he often would when he was on dialysis.

“I used to have raccoon eyes,” he said. “I don’t have those no more.”

Alyssa most recently worked as editor-in-chief of the Forward and executive editor of The City Reporter, formerly known as THE CITY, where she oversaw landmark investigations into corruption in Eric Adams’s administration, irregularities in Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin’s campaign finance practices, and much more. She’s also served on the New York Daily News editorial board and as editor of City Limits and of The New York World, and she has authored books on the US Chamber of Commerce and the history of American homeownership.

Alyssa will work with New York Focus’s politics reporters to deepen and expand our political coverage, investigate the networks of power and money that shape state government, and help New Yorkers understand who really runs their state.

“I’ve collaborated closely with New York Focus dating back to its earliest days and have been in awe all along at how effective its journalists are in exposing how power actually operates in New York, and at how they use forceful original reporting to help ensure the state works for all its people,” Alyssa said. “I consider it a great honor and opportunity to be joining such a dynamic newsroom. Let’s go!”

New York Focus launched in October 2020 as the state’s only nonprofit statewide newsroom. Its team has grown rapidly in recent years, and Alyssa’s hiring marks a new chapter for the organization, said Akash Mehta, New York Focus editor-in-chief.

“Alyssa Katz is one of New York’s great accountability journalists. She has led investigations and teams that have rattled city and state administrations, and she knows New York politics better than the politicians themselves. We’re thrilled to bring her experience and talent to New York Focus as we expand our ambition to expose how power works in New York,” Akash said.

Alyssa can be reached at alyssa@nysfocus.com.

Two female students sued the school in November 2023, alleging that the university did not take them seriously when they submitted complaints outlining how they were each “sexually, physically and verbally assaulted” by the same male student.

And they say they aren’t alone. In separate sworn affidavits, they each alleged there were multiple other students who also filed complaints with the school’s office that investigates sexual assault against the same male student.

“At least five-ten others are known to have been sexually abused” by the student, their lawyer alleged in a complaint filed in Tompkins County Supreme Court, “and it is believed that many more were abused but have yet to come forward.” (New York Focus is not naming the plaintiffs or the male student to protect their privacy.)

The case appears to have been previously unreported. It was filed under the state’s Adult Survivors Act, a landmark piece of legislation that temporarily allowed survivors of sexual abuse to bring civil lawsuits outside the state’s typical three-year statute of limitations. Survivors have brought thousands of lawsuits against schools and colleges under the act and a similar law that applies to child sexual abuse.

Cornell University, which did not respond to repeated requests for comment, asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the allegations that the university acted negligently or wrongfully did not meet certain legal standards. 

The male student, who was also named as a defendant in the suit, denied all allegations of abuse in court filings. His lawyer did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

A trial court denied the university’s and male student’s motions to dismiss the suit. The case is scheduled to move to trial next year, offering the public a rare window into Cornell’s handling of sexual assault allegations after the university received national attention in September, when a former student sued the school over its handling of an alleged 2024 sexual assault at a fraternity.

In a sworn affidavit, one of the plaintiffs in the 2023 lawsuit alleged she was repeatedly assaulted by a male student between June and “September/October” 2018 on the university’s sprawling campus in Ithaca. The second plaintiff alleged in her affidavit that she was “sexually, physically, and verbally assaulted” May 2021 — by the same male student. The lawsuit offers few details about the alleged assaults.

The plaintiffs’ attorney did not respond to requests for comment, but according to the lawsuit, both plaintiffs filed complaints with the university’s Title IX office, which investigates allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct.

The first plaintiff said that she believed other students had submitted Title IX complaints about the same student before she submitted her own in fall 2018. 

The second plaintiff said she learned that a third, unnamed student filed a complaint against the same person around the same time as her, in August 2021. “I learned that this investigation was initiated after a different survivor of a sexual assault [by the male student] filed a Title IX complaint,” the second student wrote. 

“If there were this many complaints that they were investigating, why hadn’t they gotten him off their campus?” asked Elizabeth Abdnour, an attorney who files Title IX lawsuits on behalf of survivors in Michigan and who once worked as a Title IX investigator. 

The outcome of the first complaint is unclear, but the second one was dismissed after the male student left the university, according to the lawsuit. Abdnour noted that rules passed by the first Trump administration in 2020 formally released schools from any obligation under federal law to continue investigations into students that graduate or withdraw. 

“Cornell is doing exactly what this system is intended to do,” Abdnour said, “and right now, this system is intended to silence survivors.”

It is unclear if the two women’s allegations were ever reported to law enforcement. In their lawsuits, they accuse Cornell of failing to report the allegations. 

In response to a records request from New York Focus, the Ithaca Police Department said that it did not have records of any cases involving the male student as a suspect. The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office has not yet fulfilled records requests from New York Focus.

The 2023 lawsuit is one of two filed against the university in recent years over its handling of sexual assault on campus. The other, filed in September by a former student, identified as Jane Doe, drew intense scrutiny after the student paper, the Cornell Daily Sun, published a harrowing exposé about the case. Doe alleged that she was assaulted over a number of hours at a fraternity by multiple men, all of whom have denied claims of wrongdoing.

Her lawsuit challenged Cornell’s response to the alleged assault. Doe said that the Title IX office took more than two months to look into her complaint after she reported the alleged assault to the university’s private police force. She noted that some of the accused men were issued temporary suspensions and “afforded the opportunity to mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.”

“We as an administration and we as a community must do better,” Michael Kotlikoff, the president of Cornell, said in an eight-minute video released in early October. The university has appointed Sally Yates, a former US deputy attorney general, to review the university’s process for addressing sexual assault allegations.

Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced that she would appoint a former federal prosecutor to reinvestigate the case.

Lawmakers and Governor Kathy Hochul, an ex-officio member of Cornell’s board, have also said that they will modify the so-called voluntary intoxication loophole in New York law, which currently makes it much harder for prosecutors to prove that a survivor was incapacitated and unable to consent to sex if they first consumed alcohol or other substances voluntarily.

Meanwhile, the 2023 case has been in the discovery phase for a year, and may move to trial next year. Cornell and the male student initially filed a motion to try to have the case thrown out. The university then appealed the judge’s dismissal of that motion, filing repeated letters with the court noting alleged issues with its ability to obtain evidence from the plaintiffs.

Governor Kathy Hochul’s dominant performance was a marked improvement over her last election: a tough 2022 battle against Lee Zeldin. The governor more than tripled her margin, beating Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman by more than 19 points compared to 6 points last time. (Ballots from Westchester County, which remain uncounted due to voting machine problems, will likely grow her margin further.)

She improved on her 2022 performance in every one of New York’s 62 counties (though there aren’t enough Westchester votes counted yet to confirm), especially downstate: She saw a 22-point swing in Orange County, 19 points in Rockland County and 17 points in Suffolk County. Some of that improvement likely owes to her increased support in Orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities, which largely backed Zeldin four years ago.

Remarkably, Blakeman is on track to lose his home turf of Nassau along with neighboring Suffolk, slowing the GOP’s recent inroads on Long Island.

Hochul’s gains are more modest compared to Democrat Kamala Harris’s performance in New York in the 2024 presidential race. While Hochul still beat Harris’s margin by 7 points, the governor lost ground in 30 upstate counties despite making gains downstate and in the Hudson Valley.

Alex Elmasri, a Democratic consultant with the firm Parkside Group, said Hochul’s downstate gains owed mainly to traditional blue voters who returned to the party this year after defecting to support Trump two years ago.

A similar trend explains Hochul’s big improvements in majority-minority areas like New York City, Elmasri said, where Hochul outran Harris by 21 points in the Bronx and 20 points in Queens. Black, Latino and Asian voters swung heavily toward Democrats this year after drifting toward the GOP in recent years.

Elmasri said Democratic campaigns saw similar swings this year in Black communities in cities like Newburgh, Beacon, and Poughkeepsie.

“In the city and the suburbs, there were a lot of people who historically don’t come out in midterm years or weren’t as enthusiastic in past years, who came out,” he said.

Democrats’ gains were more limited further down the ballot, in races for county legislatures and boards of supervisors. The party picked up at least 20 seats around the state, but Republicans flipped 11 Democrat-held seats of their own.

No county legislatures or boards changed party control, despite 13 of them having enough contested seats that a flip would have been possible.

Elmasri said the results illustrate how hyperlocal races are often insulated from national trends, since they can hinge on personal relationships between voters and politicians.

“When you get down to the local level and you’re talking about 300 votes cast, if everyone knows Bob who owns the pizza shop, it’s a lot easier to make politics personal,” Elmasri said.

Democrats improved on their 2024 margins in all but two of the state’s 25 US House districts with enough counted votes to compare. Their biggest gains occurred in traditionally blue districts that had drifted rightward in recent years — like the closely watched 17th District, where Republican Mike Lawler finally fell to Democrat Cait Conley after holding on for two elections.

The only two districts where Democrats lost ground slightly were the 12th and 10th, in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Elmasri noted that both victors, Micah Lasher and Brad Lander, emerged from tough Democratic primaries that left some hurt feelings, potentially causing some Democratic voters to stay home without worrying that the district would flip red.

“They were hard-fought primaries in a Democratic area, so if there were some people who felt slighted, it’s not like their vote’s going to make a humungous difference,” he said.

State government, already run by Democrats, is now bluer than ever. The party is expected to control about 111 seats in the 150-person Assembly — a record — along with 47 out of 63 state Senate seats, based on current results.

The legislature will be full of fresh faces — at least 51 out of 213 members will be new, the highest level of turnover in years — and key leadership positions will change hands. Republicans, who already held little influence at the capitol, are now truly in the wilderness.

Democrats regained the Senate supermajority that they lost after 2024, allowing them to override a governor’s veto, but legislative leaders have shown little appetite to use that power.

This year appears to have been the most expensive election cycle in recent New York history. Campaigns, party committees, and outside groups like super PACs spent more than $500 million, split roughly evenly between state and federal races, according to a New York Focus analysis of public filings — with some recent spending not yet reported. The 2024 cycle, by comparison, amounted to about $460 million.

Tens of millions of dollars spent on statewide races for governor and attorney general had little obvious impact, given the lopsided margins in those races. Hochul, a prodigious fundraiser, outspent Blakeman by $15 million, while both candidates also benefited from the support of outside super PACs. Hochul’s biggest outside supporter was rideshare giant Uber, which spent a whopping nearly $15 million on two groups backing her, while Blakeman got millions from New York Knicks owner James Dolan and several of his corporate entities.

Money still matters, though — especially in down-ballot races. Elmasri pointed to a Saratoga-area state Senate race, where Sarah Rogerson toppled the longest-serving sitting lawmaker. Rogerson’s 4-point win over Republican Jim Tedisco, who has been in office since 1983, was fueled by nearly $2 million spent on her behalf between her own campaign and Senate Democrats’ campaign arm.

“I think if there was no money spent on her behalf, she would have lost in a Harris district in a blue-wave year,” Elmasri said. “If you’re going up against a 44-year, popular incumbent, you need to explain to voters why he should be fired, and having money spent helps that.”

Progressives may have more clout in Albany next year, as they gear up for another push to raise taxes on the wealthy. Candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America will grow their ranks from nine to 16 — along with three New York lawmakers heading to Congress.

The Working Families Party had its own milestone: Hochul won more than 360,000 votes on the progressive party’s ballot line in addition to her votes on the Democratic ticket. That should allow the WFP to leapfrog the Conservative Party for “Row C,” the coveted third column on the ballot that goes to whichever party has the most votes after the Democrats and the GOP.

Thanks in part to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who encouraged his supporters to vote for Hochul on the WFP line, the party exceeded its own pre-election goal of 250,000 votes. Party leaders, who have faced an uncertain future amid competition with DSA, are triumphant.

Down ballot from Governor Kathy Hochul’s dominant re-election win and Mike Lawler’s loss to Cait Conley for Congress, Democrats’ gains could shift the balance of power in Albany in ways that remain to be seen. Wins in the state Senate will restore Democrats’ veto-proof supermajority, which they’d lost after 2024, and the party made gains in red districts that were not thought to be competitive. 

Democrats’ anticipated 111 Assembly seats will be their most ever in the 150-person body, according to Speaker Carl Heastie, while the party’s Senate majority will be its largest since 1846, Politico reported.

Here are some takeaways from Tuesday’s legislative races.

Over a dozen Democratic flips — plus one for Republicans

En route to their two-house supermajority, Democrats flipped at least six Republican-held seats in the state Senate and at least seven in the Assembly.

Three more races were uncalled by Thursday afternoon and could yield additional Democratic pickups. Democrat Ian Phillips’s lead over incumbent Republican Assemblymember John Lemondes in Central New York is probably insurmountable, according to the Syracuse Post-Standard. Democrat Ryan Taughrin led Republican incumbent Patrick Chludzinski for an Erie County Assembly seat, while Republican state Senator Jake Ashby was just 177 votes ahead of Democrat Devin Lander in the Capital District, with thousands of mail ballots left to count.

Republicans did manage to flip one Democratic-held seat: the GOP’s Michael Gentile beat Democrat Jonathan Lipe by 5 points in a Mohawk Valley Assembly district that includes the cities of Utica and Rome. (Incumbent Democrat Marianne Buttenschon is retiring.)

Democratic victors were quick to acknowledge that the national environment propelled them to victory.

“The reality is that if you had a ‘D’ next to your name, it was a good year to run,” said Joe Rand, who easily defeated Republican incumbent Bill Weber in a Rockland County Senate district that Trump won by 11 points. “I’d like to attribute it all to my prowess, but I am aware of the fact that there were other factors that went into it.”

Christopher Murray, who upset Republican state Senator Anthony Palumbo on the East End of Long Island, has been joking that “Donald Trump was doing his best to elect me.”

“Just going door-to-door or talking to people, I had never seen that type of anger toward one party or the other in my lifetime,” he said.

New faces

The defeated Republicans included notable names: Jim Tedisco, the legislature’s longest-serving sitting member, lost his Saratoga-area Senate seat to challenger Sarah Rogerson, ending a 44-year legislative career. Alec Brook-Krasny, who has represented South Brooklyn on and off since 2006, was defeated by Chris McCreight in a rematch from two years ago — one of four Democratic flips in the borough.

Turnover will be high: at least 51 new members will arrive in Albany in January, or nearly one-quarter of the 213-person legislature. That’s double the 24 freshmen who were elected in 2024.

Among the retiring members are heavy hitters like Senate Deputy Leader Michael Gianaris and Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes. Some new committee chairs are expected to be named in the coming weeks — including, potentially, a new leader of the powerful Senate Finance Committee. Current Chair Liz Krueger has suggested she might change roles as she recovers from a stroke she suffered in the spring.

Don’t count on veto overrides

On paper, Democrats’ new supermajorities give them the power to override potential vetoes from Governor Hochul. But there’s no indication that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie or Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins are itching to use that power — the legislature has not overridden a governor’s veto since lawmakers repudiated Republican Governor George Pataki on several budget measures in 2006. Heastie has referred to an override as a “nuclear option.”

“I do not believe the power dynamics change at all with the governor,” said state Senator James Skoufis, who feuded with Hochul last year before reaching a truce months later.

Supermajorities could still strengthen the legislature’s hand when negotiating with the governor, or force her to use different tactics.

Growing pains

The bigger Democratic conference could cause its own frustrations for rank-and-file lawmakers. One Albany veteran noted that individual members could have less money to spend on “legislative adds” — the funding that lawmakers tuck into each year’s budget — since the pie will need to be divided among more members, unless the overall pot of money is increased.

Other resources are similarly scarce.

“There’s only so many committee chairs to go around,” Rand said. “As you marginalize the Republicans even more, the ability to influence legislation is a little bit diminished because there’s so many more of you in the room.”

It’s less clear how the gains will shift the legislature’s ideological makeup, with various groups claiming victory. The Working Families Party, which allows Democrats to run on its third-party ballot line, grew its ranks of endorsed candidates from 28 to 34 in the Senate and 52 to 65 in the Assembly — outnumbering the GOP in both chambers.

“Albany is becoming a two-party town where it’s the Democrats and Working Families Party,” said Cori Marquis, the WFP’s deputy state director.

Candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America will nearly double their ranks from 9 to 16 next year, after DSA-endorsed candidates dominated their primaries in New York City and upstate.

“You’re going to have the DSA tail wagging the Democratic dog,” predicted John Faso, a former Republican Congressman and Assembly minority leader, who noted that the group’s push to tax the rich will be center stage in Albany in 2027.

But the scope of Democrats’ victories could also dilute DSA’s influence within their party’s conference, blunting the impact of their victories.

“If anything, DSA’s increased size may reinforce the governor’s mindset that she work to maintain a more balanced approach to policymaking,” said Skoufis, a populist-leaning moderate.

Samantha Kattan, a DSA member elected to fill Congressmember-elect Claire Valdez’s Assembly seat in Queens, argued that even some of the more moderate winners supported the group’s goals on issues like taxing the rich.

“Ultimately, it is more helpful to have a larger Democratic majority,” Kattan said.

“Team Heastie road trip to the Boston Gahden!” he posted on Instagram at the time.

The suite package was worth $13,800, but Heastie didn’t have to pay. The seats, food, and drinks were a donation from the hospitality and gambling giant Delaware North to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, or DACC, a group Heastie helps lead. 

Less than three months after the Celtics game, the annual New York state budget — which Heastie, as Assembly speaker, has a powerful role in shaping — included a tax break that could save Delaware North over $18 million.

The 2026 Celtics trip wasn’t the first time Heastie got suite access from Delaware North, which owns the TD Garden, where the Celtics play. He and his staffers enjoyed similar packages from Delaware North in 2024 and 2025, and even got to walk onto the court and pose for pictures. In 2024, Heastie was photographed with three retired NBA stars, including Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins. The total value of the donations was nearly $37,000.

“It looks corrupt,” said David Grandeau, a lawyer who served as New York’s top lobbying regulator. “At best, it’s just business as usual. At worst, it’s a bribe.”

Heastie’s mingling of his public role with his sports fandom goes far beyond the Celtics.

Since he became Assembly speaker and honorary chair of DACC in 2015, the group has paid over $1 million to teams, stadiums and sports-related companies including the Yankees, Mets, the Buffalo Sabres, Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden, and Long Island’s UBS Arena.

Purchases have included two Subway Series games at the Mets’s Citi Field and two Knicks playoff games, including one during their electrifying 2026 championship run. The committee has also spent six figures on a company that offers meet-and-greets with retired Yankees stars.

DACC exists to support Democratic state Assembly candidates across New York, and is mostly funded by donations from major corporations and unions, including many that lobby Heastie and other lawmakers.

The committee averaged less than $5,000 per year in sports spending in the decade before Heastie became speaker.  Since then, that number has rocketed to nearly $90,000.

State ethics law bans giving gifts to politicians if the gifts seem intended to win influence, but campaign donations — like the suite packages from Delaware North — aren’t considered gifts under state regulations.

New York law also forbids politicians and political committees like DACC from using campaign donations for personal benefit. The law specifically prohibits using campaign resources to attend a sports game, unless it is connected to a campaign, party role, or job duties. 

Do you have information about politicians spending campaign funds on sports tickets or other personal uses? We'd love to hear from you. Contact Sam Mellins at sam@nysfocus.com or on Signal at mellins.613. You can remain anonymous.

Since 2015, DACC has classified more than half of its sports-related spending as fundraising expenses. But much of it had no explanation, and over $154,000 in sports-related payments were categorized as “office expenses.”

If that money “is being used primarily for personal benefit, then it’s a misuse of funds and probably illegal,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who chaired New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board. “A lot’s just going to turn on how much of this is fundraising and how much of this is not.” 

Delaware North spokesperson Glen White defended the company’s donations. “Delaware North was asked to donate our suite,” for the three Celtics games “so it could be used to host political fundraising events,” White said. He did not answer when asked who specifically made the request.

“Our government affairs team and lobbyists always operate within applicable lobbying and campaign finance laws,” White added, and said the company did not discuss political matters with Heastie or his staff at the games.

Heastie’s office and DACC did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

It’s not clear how many games the $1 million in spending has paid for. Many of the transactions are lump sums that likely reflect bulk purchases for multiple games, such as a $90,000 payment to the Yankees on April 20 of this year. Most of the larger expenditures were labeled “fundraising.”

New York Focus was able to pinpoint seven specific days that Heastie attended sporting events likely paid for by DACC, based on social media posts and campaign account spending on stadium concessions. That number is almost certainly an undercount, since spending data doesn’t show every game paid for by the fund. 

On all of those occasions, Heastie attended in box seats or a suite  — generally among the most expensive seats in stadiums. DACC or Heastie’s own campaign account also spent money on concessions at sports venues on 12 other occasions since 2015.

Some of those dates corresponded with bursts of donations to DACC, but in other cases, donations slumped in the days surrounding the game.

New York Focus interviewed a former DACC employee who attended several Yankees games with Heastie in suites paid for by DACC. “People just kind of hung out and drank a lot,” he said. “It really didn’t feel like a donor-focused event.”

Heastie would “work the room,” talking to all the guests, and “was always in a good mood” at the games, the employee said. DACC staff and elected Democrats were freely offered tickets before games, and while donors did attend, they appeared to be outnumbered by politicos, he said.

“They would just have a ton of tickets available,” he said, “Any of the Assembly members could get a ticket and go.” Once, the guest list included Heastie’s girlfriend at the time, lobbyist Rebecca Lamorte, he said.

Food and drink were free for guests, and retired Yankees players would often show up and sign autographs.

DACC also covered travel and hotel costs for Albany-based staff who came to New York City for the games, the former employee said. DACC’s financial records appear to back this up. For example, in August 2024, DACC spent $624 at a hotel near Citi Field the day after dropping $4,286 on stadium concessions at a Mets game. In September 2025, the group spent $432 at a Bronx hotel the day after Heastie attended a Yankees game and DACC sent $22,121 to the Yankees.

It’s not unusual for New York politicians to use sporting events as a way to woo donors, but no other campaign account in the state comes close to rivaling DACC’s spending. And it’s hard to know how many of the games were actually fundraisers; the photos of Heastie, for instance, feature his staff, friends, and occasional sports stars, but no known donors. Reports from a nonprofit government watchdog show that DACC hosted several fundraisers at Yankee Stadium in the 2010s.

In the past decade, DACC’s counterpart in the state Senate, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has raised nearly as much money while spending less than a tenth as much on sporting events.

All of the sports purchases were made from DACC’s “housekeeping” fund, which can accept unlimited contributions to pay for party expenses, but can’t spend money supporting specific candidates or campaigns.

Ethics watchdogs have long complained that housekeeping accounts effectively serve as party slush funds, and have called for limits on the donations that such accounts are allowed to accept.

“Housekeeping accounts are important because they allow contributions for non-political operating expenses,” said Sarah Steiner, an election law attorney in New York City. “But there isn’t much oversight, and the use of them is very flexible.”

The official head of DACC is Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the northwest Bronx. He did not respond to requests for comment. David Waterman, the group’s executive director, hung up when reached by phone. 

Dinowitz has previously minimized his role, telling New York Focus in 2024 that he’s “not the person who signs checks” for the group and that he’s not familiar with what it spends money on. 

Heastie’s influence on DACC’s spending isn’t limited to sports. For instance, despite a near-total lack of competitive elections in the Bronx, DACC has in recent years funneled nearly $700,000 to the Bronx Democratic Party, which Heastie once chaired.

Besides being a Celtics fan, Heastie, a native Bronxite, is also a hardcore Yankees supporter. So it’s not surprising that the majority of DACC’s sports spending since 2015 has gone to the Bronx’s hometown team. DACC didn’t buy Yankees tickets before Heastie became speaker, but since then, the group has paid the team over $588,000.

Since 2015, DACC has also paid over $117,000 to Wish You Were Here Productions, a company that books retired Yankees players for events. The payments have occurred every year in that span except for 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed in-person gatherings.

Last September, Heastie posted a picture with legendary Yankees outfielder Bernie Williams, who was part of four World Series-winning teams between 1996 and 2000. The same day, DACC paid Wish You Were Here Productions $19,538.

In June, Heastie posed for a photo in a Yankee Stadium suite with retired pitcher David Cone, who was Williams’s teammate for the four World Series wins, pitched Major League Baseball’s 16th-ever perfect game in 1999, and works with Wish You Were Here to schedule appearances. Days later, DACC paid the company $22,420.

“What an amazing guy,” Heastie gushed in a Facebook post showing him with Cone. The two “actually talked more about my work in the state than we did baseball,” he added.

Delaware North is a regular and generous donor to New York politicians, but according to state campaign finance records, it hasn’t provided any other free suite packages.

The company operates gambling, sports, and dining venues from Buffalo to Long Island and is a major force in state politics. From 2016 to 2023, it employed Governor Kathy Hochul’s husband, William Hochul, as a senior vice president. It spends freely on lobbyists: In each of the three years that it donated suites for Heastie’s Celtics trips, it also reported lobbying Heastie or his staff on multiple issues.

This year, it won big.

In the weeks after the 2026 Celtics game, lobbying records show meetings between Heastie himself and both Delaware North’s in-house lobbyist, Shannon Patch, and lobbyists representing the company from the firm O’Donnell & Associates. They focused on Finger Lakes Gaming & Racetrack, a slot machine parlor and horse racing track owned and operated by Delaware North, and potential changes to the high tax rate that slot parlors pay to the state.

The meetings came at the height of New York’s annual state budget process, when the governor, state Senate leader, and Assembly speaker spend weeks negotiating how the state will spend its funds. The budget is generally the only piece of legislation each year that contains tax rate changes, so it was Delaware North’s best chance to get relief for its Finger Lakes facility. 

It wasn’t obvious that Delaware North would succeed. There were no changes to the slot machine tax rate in Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2026 budget proposal, which was released in January, nor in the Senate’s and Assembly’s response proposals, which came out in early March, just days after the Celtics game.

But when lawmakers approved the final budget in late May, the Finger Lakes facility and other gaming venues around the state scored. The budget contained a significant boost to slot parlors’ commissions, allowing them to keep more money as profit and pay less in taxes. 

For Finger Lakes, this benefit could be worth over $18 million by the time it expires in mid-2029, according to New York Focus’s analysis. Some gaming facilities not owned by Delaware North may benefit even more.

Other gambling companies also lobbied on slot parlors’ tax rates this year, including MGM Resorts, the Malaysian company Genting, and Saratoga Casino Holdings. But Delaware North was the only one whose lobbyists reported meeting with Heastie personally.

Heastie isn’t the first New York politician whose sports loyalties have raised ethical questions. In 2007, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came under scrutiny for owning four Yankees World Series rings, which the Yankees claimed to have sold him for $16,000 — a small fraction of their market value. 

And in 2010, then-Governor David Paterson was fined $62,125 for soliciting and accepting free World Series tickets from the Yankees, and lying under oath during a subsequent investigation. 

Neither was charged with a crime.

Using campaign funds for sports tickets is an old habit for Heastie, who was elected to the Assembly in 2000. In 2005, his campaign paid the Yankees $380 and spent $1,176 on tickets to the Meadowlands football stadium.

In the mid-2010s, the Moreland Commission, which was investigating corruption in state politics, identified him as one of 28 state lawmakers whose campaign reports showed more than $10,000 going to unclear recipients, and subpoenaed the campaign’s bank account. A memo prepared by commission staff said the spending “raises questions about whether campaign funds are being used for personal expenses instead of permissible election purposes,” The New York Times reported in 2015.

The Times also found that year that Heastie’s campaign had covered restaurant bills, tabs at night clubs and karaoke bars, football games, and gas and car repair bills. Heastie was never accused of wrongdoing, and then-Governor Andrew Cuomo disbanded the anti-corruption commission in 2014. 

When Heastie became the leader of the Assembly and honorary chair of DACC, his campaign’s sports spending didn’t jump dramatically, but DACC’s did. In May 2015, just months after he grasped the speaker’s gavel, DACC paid the Yankees for the first time: $30,190.

Heastie’s political role has also gotten him discount tickets without campaign fund involvement. In 2023, he attended a Buffalo Bills home game against the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite football team. He sat in a VIP state-owned box with guests including Governor Kathy Hochul; Patrick Jenkins, a powerful lobbyist and Heastie’s close friend and college roommate; and Rebecca Lamorte, a lobbyist that Heastie was dating. Despite official guidelines that state officials pay or donate the same amount as the “general public” for their tickets, the Bills set ticket prices for the public officials at just $177, far below market cost. Heastie, who attended with Lamorte as his guest, gave $370 to charity.

In September, Heastie and Jenkins traveled to Rio de Janeiro to watch the Cowboys take on the Baltimore Ravens. It’s not clear who paid for that trip, during which the two men went to a party hosted by retired Cowboys Hall of Famer Charles Haley.

Back home in New York, DACC appears to have spent large sums to send Heastie to Mets and Knicks games. In October 2024, during the Mets off-season, DACC paid the team $77,152, listed as fundraising. On July 6, 2025, Heastie enjoyed box seats to a Subway Series game at Citi Field with four of his former colleagues in the state Assembly, including US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and US Representative Grace Meng. 

That day, DACC paid $1,262 to Aramark Citi Field, the Mets’s food vendor. Two days after the game, Jeffries’s campaign paid Citi Field $2,724. It’s not clear how or whether Meng, whose office did not respond to requests for comment, paid for her ticket.

The other two former Assembly members who joined that day were Rubén Díaz Jr. and Marcos Crespo, both of whom are now executives at Bronx healthcare giant Montefiore Einstein. Crespo and Díaz Jr. are personal friends of Heastie’s and frequently appear in his social media posts. A Montefiore spokesperson said that both attended in their personal capacity, not as Montefiore representatives. 

Two months earlier, Heastie, an old friend of his, and a staffer went to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks face the Celtics. This wasn’t just any game: It was the second round of the playoffs, where individual tickets for prime seats can sell for thousands of dollars.  The previous month, DACC had paid the Garden $47,500, and on the day of the game, another $2,877.

The stakes were high. The Knicks had won the first two games of the series in Boston, and Heastie’s beloved Celtics were fighting not to fall further behind into a 0-3 hole. 

In a photo taken during a pause in the game, Heastie is standing with his back to the court, smiling for the camera. It’s not hard to understand why: The Celtics were winning. That day, they would go on to trounce the Knicks, 115-93.

Meanwhile, Democrats were leading in a number of other key races. In contests for the US House of Representatives, Mike Lawler conceded to Democratic challenger Cait Conley in the Hudson Valley; and Democratic incumbents Tom Suozzi and Laura Gillen beat Republican challengers on Long Island. Democrat Blake Gendebien was initially neck and neck with Republican Anthony Constantino for a deep-red North Country seat, but ultimately conceded the race.

Other Democrats prevailed easily statewide. Attorney General Letitia James overcame a spirited challenge from Republican Saritha Komatireddy — leading by 20 points with nearly 90 percent of votes counted — and Tom DiNapoli easily secured another term as comptroller.

The blue wave extended to the state legislature, where Democrats looked poised to pick up seats in both houses. South Brooklyn Republican State Senator Steve Chan trailed Democrat Larry He by 18 points with nearly all votes counted, and Democrats held leads in other seats on Long Island and upstate.

Hochul led Blakeman by 20 points with 88 percent of votes counted — the widest margin in a New York gubernatorial race since 2018. In 2022, she prevailed over Republican Lee Zeldin by only 6 points.

Follow live results for races across New York, up and down the ballot, on our realtime tracker.

Speaking to supporters Tuesday night at a Midtown Manhattan watch party, Hochul thanked voters for re-electing her to a job that she called “the privilege of a lifetime.” She vowed to spend her next term addressing the state’s affordability crisis.

“That’s what the next four years are for: to finish what we started, with bold ambition and a sense of urgency,” Hochul said.

The results suggest that New York remains a solidly blue state for Democrats — tamping down speculation that the GOP might be making inroads after Zeldin’s strong performance and other Republican gains on Long Island. Hochul herself has argued that the state is no sure bet for Democrats, and tried to lower expectations that she would win by a wide margin.

“When people think that it’s a true-blue state and you should win by 25 points in New York or even 15 points — those days are over,” Hochul said in an October appearance on the Max Politics podcast. “We have truly major pockets of mega-Republicans.”

The mood was jubilant at the Manhattan watch party held by state Democrats, where the crowd celebrated Democratic romps across the country.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani told the crowd that Hochul has embraced “new energy” and “new ideas.”

“Governor Hochul has led with a recognition that our highest obligation is not to our factions but to our futures,” Mamdani said.

Hochul has campaigned aggressively in recent weeks — holding rallies across the state before spending the lead-up to Election Day in vote-rich New York City, where she campaigned with Mamdani and other top Democrats. Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, rallied in Syracuse last month with President Donald Trump, and spent the day before the election jumping from Long Island to Syracuse with fellow statewide GOP candidates.

The race centered on the cost of living, which has consistently ranked alongside the economy as the top concern of New York voters, according to polls. Hochul has run on her record — touting the tax cuts she enacted on middle-income households, her efforts to lower auto insurance rates, and the checks she has mailed to taxpayers in the form of “energy rebates” and “inflation refunds,” which have come at a multibillion-dollar cost to the state.

Blakeman campaigned on a promise to eliminate income taxes for individuals earning below $50,000 and married couples making under $100,000, as well as an across-the-board 10-percent tax cut for incomes below $250,000. Blakeman blamed Hochul for rising utility bills and the state’s high tax rates, although his own policy platform was thinly sketched out.

Both candidates raised millions of dollars, and both were aided by an onslaught of spending by outside super PACs. Hochul was buoyed by outside groups including Uber, sports betting companies like DraftKings and a hotel workers’ union, while pro-Blakeman groups raised millions from New York Knicks owner James Dolan, casino magnate Stephen Wynn and cosmetics heir William Lauder.

Hochul’s victory gives her a second full four-year term and solidifies her place atop the power structure in Albany. After a rocky first few years, punctuated by embarrassing battles with the state legislature and scandals in her inner circle, the governor has lately wielded power more effectively — repeatedly delaying state budgets in order to push through policy priorities such as auto insurance reform and rollbacks to the state’s 2019 climate and bail laws. She has also forged an unlikely but effective partnership with Mamdani — helping him with policies like child care while cultivating good ties with his avid base of supporters.

“Part of the governor’s brand is that she puts her head down and does the work, and she’s not a showboat,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic strategist. “The downside of that is, day to day, less people know who you are, and less people are as engaged with your work.”

Here’s what Westchester voters need to know about the situation.

Will everyone’s vote still be counted? 

Yes. The malfunctions won’t affect the results of the election. 

“The Westchester Board of Elections wants to reassure every voter that your vote matters, your ballot will be secure and your vote will be counted,” the board said in a statement. “We strongly encourage all voters to remain in line, exercise patience and, most importantly, cast their ballots.”

Why is this happening now? 

Though voting machines were initially tested ahead of the election, the programming on the machines used on Election Day did not include a necessary update made after testing, according to a statement issued by the State Board of Elections.  

Earlier in the day, Westchester County created confusion when it released and then retracted a statement blaming the issue on the thickness of the paper ballots.

“Every election cycle you’ll have incidents that happen,” cybersecurity and voting expert Pamela Smith said. “A spot check would have surfaced this particular issue.”

Has this made voting harder for people in Westchester? 

No. Voters can still cast their votes on paper ballots. The only difference is that voters will submit their ballots in secure emergency orange bags. This is a standard back-up procedure laid out by New York’s election law. 

“After initial confusion at the beginning of the day, the reports we’re getting is that it’s pretty calm at polling places in Westchester,” Common Cause Executive Director Susan Lerner said.

ADA-compliant machines are being updated at polling stations across the county to handle evening voters, Lawler explained at a press conference held this afternoon.

Is this likely to affect the speed of the count?

Yes, it’s possible. There are procedures to ensure that every ballot is tracked and counted, with members of both parties overseeing the scanning and, if necessary, hand-counting the ballots.

“The results may take longer to come in in Westchester,” Lerner said. “And that’s ok. Accurate results are worth waiting for.”

Republicans and Democrats are seeking a joint court order to require central tabulation of the ballots. According to Lawler, their proposal includes requiring bags holding unprocessed ballots to remain sealed until they are taken to the Board of Elections in White Plains after polls close at 9 pm. 

The Board of Elections has around 10 machines that can process roughly 2,000 ballots an hour being set up for the count. That could be enough to get a tally in tonight, Lawler said, though it may go into the early morning. 

Has the same problem happened elsewhere? 

Voting machine problems disrupted early voting in Tompkins County in the Finger Lakes region, where a printing malfunction meant voting machines could not scan the ballots, and voters submitted their ballots in secure emergency ballot bags instead. These ballots will be hand-counted after Election Day.

Millions of voters will head to the polls today to vote for governor, statewide officers, members of US Congress and the state legislature, and numerous local and county officials.

On the national stage, a handful of key congressional races could determine the balance of power in the US House of Representatives. In the lower Hudson Valley, the toss-up race between Republican incumbent Mike Lawler and challenger Cait Conley in the 17th District could give Democrats a critical seat in their pursuit of a House majority. And in a solidly red district in the North Country, a Democratic dairy farmer is vying with the Republican candidate in a tightening race to replace US Representative Elise Stefanik.

The governor’s race has also become surprisingly competitive as incumbent Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul faces off against Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman.

At the local level, Democrats are hoping for a “blue wave” in counties across the state. More than a half-dozen Republican-led county legislatures have enough contested seats up for election today to allow Democrats to claim a majority.

Here’s what you need to know.

What time are polls open? Where do I go?

Polls are open across the state from 6 am to 9 pm. If you’re in line at 9pm, you can cast your vote. You can find your Election Day polling place using the Board of Elections voter lookup portal. Make sure to double check yours before venturing out to vote, as locations often change between elections and from early voting to Election Day. 

Am I registered?

To participate in today’s election, you would have had to register by October 24. See if you’re registered using the Board of Elections voter lookup portal.

Do I need to bring anything?

You do not need to bring an ID to vote, unless you did not provide adequate identification when registering. The Board of Elections verifies identification through a voter’s DMV number or social security number, or through a valid photo ID and a current utility bill, paycheck, or other proof of address. If you are not properly registered, you can still cast your ballot, but you may need to vote by affidavit. 

What’s my deadline for mailing a ballot?

Mail ballots must be postmarked by November 3, and will be accepted until November 10.

What will we know on election night? When will results be certified?

Early votes are typically reported first, followed by Election Day ballots and mail ballots that arrived by Election Day. The Board of Elections will accept mail ballots until November 10 (with later deadlines for military and overseas voters). Closer races may take longer to call while officials track outstanding votes.

I need help.

About 100 organizations across the state formed a coalition called Election Protection to support New Yorkers during this election. To ask a question or report a problem, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE.

What’s the status of early voting in New York?

New York has historically had some of the lowest voter turnout during midterms, but this year early turnout has surged, with 2.1 million total early votes reported as of Monday.

“The president introduced so many doubts about mail voting and the USPS has had such performance issues that people have swung very hard from mail voting to early voting,” VoteShield co-founder and elections expert Quinn Raymond said.

Who is in charge of elections?

The US Constitution gives states primary authority over election administration, and roughly 8,000 local jurisdictions administer elections across the country. In New York, the state Board of Elections runs elections in collaboration with election officials from New York’s local jurisdictions — 57 counties plus New York City’s Board of Elections. 

Will immigrants feel safe to vote?

The federal government’s immigration crackdown has sparked concern about suppressed voter turnout among immigrant communities.

Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, hopes immigrants will feel safe at the polls. “ICE at polls is illegal, but people pick up that talking point,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause.

Make the Road, a nonprofit immigrant advocacy group, is trying to help. In late October, its members drove through Long Island to encourage early voting.  Ultimately, Nassau County had the highest early turnout outside of New York City with 192,623 early voters, according to the Board of Election.

“If we want to see change, we need to unite and have courage, Sonía Pérez, a volunteer with Make the Road who made tamales for the party bus, said in Spanish. “I’m the first generation in my family to vote, but I want to vote for family who cannot.”

Where can I read more?

You’ve come to the right place. New York Focus reporters have covered the election’s key races, issues, and controversies. Read those stories here.

We’ll be watching live results tonight. Keep up with the results here.

The Blakeman campaign’s bank records, which were obtained by New York Focus, show dozens of payments the campaign made or received from last December through September 2026 that never appeared in public disclosures filed with the Board of Elections.

That includes at least two dozen undisclosed expenditures totaling more than $1.3 million, and 13 contributions or transfers to the campaign totaling $518,500. Among the unreported donations are two large transfers from the Republican Party in Blakeman’s home county, Nassau, as well as donations from a politically connected lawyer and a wealthy investor.

The cause of the discrepancies is unclear. Blakeman’s campaign finance reports have been rife with errors, which his aides have blamed on the state’s online filing system. The repeated bookkeeping issues raise questions about the functioning of a campaign that is also receiving millions of taxpayer dollars through the state’s new matching funds program.

New York Focus reported in September that Blakeman improperly requested public matching funds from more than 2,600 donors who don’t qualify for the state program. Following the report, the New York State Democratic Party filed a complaint with the state’s elections watchdog requesting an investigation.

Blakeman never disclosed two transfers totaling $436,000 that his campaign received from the Nassau County Republican Committee in April and September, according to the bank statements. Blakeman’s public disclosures do show more than $6 million in other transfers he has gotten from the Nassau GOP through a fundraising maneuver that has allowed both him and his rival, Governor Kathy Hochul, to take advantage of their parties’ looser donation limits.

Blakeman also failed to disclose an $18,000 donation in July from Lori and Howard Fensterman, a politically connected Long Island couple. Howard, who co-founded the law firm Abrams Fensterman, is serving as Blakeman’s campaign finance chair; the Nassau County government that Blakeman oversees awarded the firm a $730,000 contract this year.

Fensterman’s son, law partners, and the firm itself have donated heavily to Blakeman this year, but Fensterman’s own donation had escaped public notice because of the omission.

Blakeman also omitted another six donations, including a $350 donation from the tech investor Lee Fixel, and significantly understated four others. For example, a $9,000 wire from the billionaire investor Gregg Hymowitz shows up under the same May 6 date on the campaign filing, but is listed as just $50.

On the other side of the ledger, Blakeman’s biggest undisclosed expense was a $1,150,000 wire transfer on September 25 to McLaughlin & Associates, a GOP-aligned polling firm. The expense appears nowhere in his recent Board of Elections filings, although his campaign has disclosed $11.4 million in other payments to the company.

Other payments that appear in the bank records but not in Blakeman’s public filings include a $59,867 payment last month to Ask Ilysa LLC, an event planner; a $15,512 check to a Virginia-based firm called Mercury Acquisition; $487 spent in August at Villa Roma Resort in the Catskills; and more than a dozen other checks paid out to recipients who are not named in the bank statement.

A Blakeman campaign spokesperson did not respond to questions about the specific discrepancies or what might have caused them. The spokesperson, Madison Spanodemos, said in a statement: “It’s no surprise Kathy Hochul would rather talk about New York’s outdated campaign finance system instead of explaining why she hiked taxes by $8 billion, raised utility rates 48 times, and put criminals first.”

Spanodemos did not provide a basis for those claims. Hochul has lowered taxes on middle-income earners during her tenure, and extended a previous tax increase on individuals earning over $1 million.

Blakeman’s campaign bank records are not public but can be requested from the Board of Elections through the Freedom of Information Law. As Politico first reported, the campaign’s bank account balance at the end of September was far higher than the amount it publicly reported having on hand.

Blair Horner, senior policy adviser for the New York Public Interest Research Group, argued that Blakeman should be capable of filing more accurate reports, given his decades-long career in New York politics.

“Yes, the BOE needs to be better, yes, New York’s disclosure laws need to be better, and yes, the enforcement needs to be better,” Horner said, “but he knows how the rules work, so he should be reporting his stuff accurately.”

Blakeman’s campaign will be audited after the election, along with all other statewide campaigns participating in the matching funds program.

Perhaps the clearest yet: National Grid Ventures, the unregulated arm of the utility company National Grid, has applied to the state’s grid operator to build three new gas units on the sites of its current, aging power plants on Long Island. The company has been talking about doing so for months. 

According to grid operator data, the company in August and September proposed adding two generators totaling more than 1,100 megawatts at the E.F. Barrett plant in Nassau County and another 450 megawatts at the Northport Power Station, in Suffolk. Combined, the new units could power more than 1 million homes and allow the company to retire existing turbines at the two plants — the oldest of which is 70 years old — in a process known as “repowering.” 

National Grid has not said how much it plans to spend on the buildout, but based on national estimates, each of the units it wants to build would likely cost upwards of $1 billion. That could be a significant underestimate for downstate New York, which has some of the highest construction costs in the country.

The grid operator NYISO increasingly sees such upgrades as necessary to keep the lights on downstate while cleaning up the grid, as the oldest plants sputter and new clean energy fails to keep pace. The new units could generate more electricity while reducing toxic emissions such as nitrogen oxides, which have been linked to heart disease, lung damage, and asthma. But they might be hard to square with the state’s climate law, which requires a zero-emissions grid by 2040.

National Grid has pitched the move as a way to bolster reliability while moving toward that goal. 

“You’re basically putting forward generation technology that is much more efficient and reduces emissions,” Sarah Orban Salati, the chief commercial officer at National Grid Ventures US, told a conference in New York City last week.

Even if the company were to shut down all the old turbines at E.F. Barrett, the new ones would increase the plant’s total capacity by more than three-quarters, according to an analysis by New York Focus. That means they could ultimately burn more gas, a process that releases carbon dioxide and contributes to climate change.

“They’re pursuing projects that are going to be bad for the community’s health, bad for our financial pockets, and just overall not beneficial for a long-term environment,” said Kiana Bierria-Anderson, Long Island director at the advocacy group New York Communities for Change, of National Grid.

According to the grid operator’s records, the expanded Barrett plant would connect to a new, underground transmission line that is currently seeking final state approvals to begin construction.  

National Grid aims to fire up all three units by 2035. That’s just five years before New York is supposed to phase out all fossil fuel power plants. (Industry groups have challenged that mandate, but as of now it remains on the books.)

It’s not clear how the projects would be economically viable on such a short time scale. Power plants are typically built to last decades, allowing companies to recoup the steep up-front costs over time. Those costs today are higher than ever, due to a supply chain crunch driven by surging power demand from data centers. 

Whether the new generators would be able to keep running beyond 2040 remains an open question. 

State officials have acknowledged that downstate gas plants may need to be replaced — rather than shut down — as late as 2035 to make up for offshore wind projects that the Trump administration has blocked. The new plants could eventually be fueled by “renewable” natural gas or green hydrogen, allowing them to keep operating without polluting; National Grid is already installing a small hydrogen generator at the Northport plant. But the technologies remain costly and largely speculative at the scale required for power plants. 

National Grid Ventures declined to answer specific questions about its plans, instead providing a general statement. 

“While specific project details remain under evaluation, we are committed to working with New York stakeholders to help meet the state’s energy needs,” said the company’s US president, Will Hazelip. 

Hazelip stressed that the company’s recent pitch to the grid operator does not confirm that the projects will get built, but said it would give the company a chance to move ahead with them as soon as possible.

The Long Island Power Authority, the region’s main utility and the likeliest customer for the plants, declined to comment on National Grid’s plans. Spokesperson Michelle Livingston noted that the utility is currently updating its Integrated Resource Plan, which “will consider all resource options needed to meet Long Island’s future energy needs.” 

Hazelip has said that waiting for a final plan would delay repowering for too long. 

The kinds of plants National Grid wants to build — known as combined cycle — are far more efficient than the aging plants New York City and Long Island still rely on to supply most of their power.  NYISO estimates that replacing old, dirty plants could cut nitrogen oxide pollution by nearly 90 percent at peak times.

What about greenhouse gas emissions? While new plants are far more efficient than their older peers, they could end up burning more gas — and polluting more — over the long term, especially if they feed new data centers or other energy-hungry facilities in the region. So far, the industry has mostly avoided the area due to its tight energy supply. 

Any new plants would need multiple approvals from state agencies. The Department of Environmental Conservation, which manages air pollution permits, has not yet received any applications for plant repowerings on Long Island, spokesperson Aphrodite Montalvo told New York Focus.

Opponents say their fight against the projects is just getting started. In September, New York Communities for Change and other groups led a protest in Northport against the plan, and activists have been knocking on doors in the area to raise awareness of the issue.

“If you think you’re going to bulldoze us and get what you want, we actually are committed to fighting you,” said Bierria-Anderson.

Stratton was out looking for votes. He planned to knock on doors and make his pitch: No career politician, he could bring a new perspective to the county legislature, drawing on his time as a regional fire management coordinator with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

It was one of the coldest days of the fall, and Stratton wore sunglasses, a camo cap, jeans, and a mustard yellow coat over a T-shirt he described as “hunter safety orange” — the color he had chosen for his campaign to remind voters in his rural community that he, too, is an outdoorsman.

Every small way to connect with voters helps, since Stratton, campaigning in bright red Oswego County, is running as a Democrat. Records going back to the early 1990s show Democrats having never held a majority in the Oswego legislature. For much of the last decade, they held only two of 25 seats — though in a surprising development last year, they won five new seats, bringing their total to seven.

This year, fueled by anger at the presidency of Donald Trump, a sense of momentum from 2025, and a belief that voters’ appetite for change could percolate down to the county level, the Democrats are hoping to flip the legislature. They say the county government could be doing more to address poverty and food insecurity in Oswego, which ranks among the poorest counties in New York. They have fielded 17 candidates, more than in any year going back to at least 2009 and one of the largest slates anywhere upstate, in a county that Trump won by 24 points in 2024.

Their candidacies raise the question of how far a midterm blue wave might go.

“To flip the legislature would be basically history-making,” said Christine Weisenburger, who became chair of the county Democratic committee last year. “I keep telling candidates, ‘You’ll be on Rachel Maddow when we flip this.’”

Oswego County Republicans told New York Focus that they feel the Democrats are turning the county legislature races into referenda on Trump rather than on their own governing. They’re proud of their record.

“Why would you choose something different when your taxes have been stable or decreased over the last 10 years?” said Terry Wilbur, the Republican committee chair and a former legislator. “We have a record of providing good services at little to no increase whatsoever in your tax base.”

National politics aside, there is also a more fundamental issue at stake in the Oswego County races: Does anyone care about their county legislature?

“What Does a County Legislature Do?”

Stratton turned off Pulaski’s main drag and onto a residential block of Maple Avenue. Joyce Quackenbush, on a walk with her beagle, Peanut, spotted the campaign flyers in his hand and asked what he was passing out. Stratton introduced himself and said he was running to represent her.

“I’ve been wanting to ask,” Quackenbush said. “What does a county legislature do?”

Her question has come up a lot on the campaign trail, several candidates told New York Focus. Some admitted they weren’t too sure about the answer before they decided to run.

“They take care of the daily business for the county,” Stratton explained.

To be more specific, New York’s 40 county legislatures set the budgets for county agencies, including the social services and public works departments. They dictate policy, like whether sheriff’s deputies can collaborate with immigration enforcement agents. They appoint people to industrial development agencies, which offer tax incentives to businesses. In Oswego, with a population of about 120,000, the total county budget is about $280 million.

County legislatures are powerful — yet the races to fill their seats are often sleepy affairs. This year, fewer than half of the seats up for election statewide are contested, making Oswego County, where about two-thirds of the legislature races have two candidates, something of an outlier. Voter turnout has traditionally been low. Incumbents have a huge advantage, said Lisa Parshall, a political science professor at Daemen University, outside Buffalo — which isn’t necessarily a problem.

“The fact that these aren’t highly contested races could just be indicative that people have high trust in their local officials and they’re doing an okay job,” she said.

But that dynamic is not static, said Grant Reeher, a political science professor at Syracuse University.

“You get into a period where there are big hikes in property taxes, or now what we’re getting into today: times where the national politics gets so highly polarized,” Reeher said. “Those issues and that attention can trickle down to the county level.” 

That happened last year in neighboring Onondaga County, home to Syracuse, when Democrats won control of the legislature for the first time in decades. David Knapp, a longtime Republican legislator, said his party’s turnout was “absolutely abysmal.”

Knapp said Onondaga Republicans have had conversations with their Oswego counterparts to share advice: “Learn from us. Can’t take anything for granted. You’ve gotta get out there. Be seen. Remind people what’s going on and what you’ve done.”

“Something I Can Do Besides Protest and Bitch”

Dozens of people stood along the side of Route 104, the state highway that runs through downtown Oswego, near the bridge over the canal that takes boats into Lake Ontario. They carried cardboard signs: “ICE OUT,” “NO KINGS SINCE 1776,” and “BE PART OF THE BLUE WAVE.” Some passersby honked and waved approvingly. A group of young men driving by called out, “We love Trump!”

It was the 82nd weekly demonstration on the bridge since early in the Trump presidency, according to Indivisible Oswego County, the local branch of the national progressive movement. Democrats agreed the Indivisible demonstrations are part of why they were able to field so many candidates this year, and why they feel optimistic about their odds next week.

Among the crowd were several of the 17 candidates for county legislature, including Stratton and Colette Badger, who carried a sign depicting the Statue of Liberty grabbing Trump by his coattails and the words “Grab him by the midterms.” Badger, who is running to represent the town of Oswego after a long career in nursing, said frustration with the Trump presidency had led her to become a regular attendee at Indivisible events.

After a friend suggested she run for county legislator, she dismissed the idea at first. Then she decided to do it.

“I kept thinking, there’s gotta be something I can do besides protest and bitch every day,” she said.

The consistent protests have triggered backlash. Claudia Tenney, the Republican congressional representative, has claimed without evidence that the protesters are “paid,” and the county’s Republican committee posted on Facebook that Indivisible is “backed by a well-funded, far-left political machine.” Edward Gilson, Stratton’s opponent and the incumbent, told New York Focus he calls the protesters “the insurrection group.”

Wilbur, the Republican chair, thinks voters will reward his party for what he described as a strong track record and a solid Republican plan.

“Not only is it economic development, but it’s being a conservative protector of your tax dollars,” he said. “It’s also making sure the future is bright.”

Democrats say that the Republican supermajority has failed. They point out that a quarter of the county’s children live in poverty, well above the state average of 18 percent. (In a letter inviting Bernie Sanders to visit, Weisenburger described Oswego as “the West Virginia of New York.” Sanders did not respond.)

They’re angry that the legislature voted to give each member and Sheriff Don Hilton raises at the same time that county residents are losing SNAP benefits and approved $35,000 to sponsor a NASCAR truck in Watkins Glen, though Democratic members also voted for that.

Ultimately, however, their pitch is simple.

“You can have what you’ve always had,” Weisenburger said. “Or you can say, ‘Okay, let’s try something different and see if life gets better.’”

“I’ll Certainly Vote for You”

Most county legislature races in upstate New York are battles for a few thousand votes, run on shoestring budgets, with no staff. There are no polls and no real way to gauge the likely outcomes other than debating the significance of a yard sign advantage and tallying doors knocked.

At this scale, it’s possible for candidates to attempt to meet all of their potential voters. A few hours on the county legislature campaign trail is enough to reveal that partisan affiliation is often less important than human connections.

Tod Simons, the Democrat running to represent parts of the City of Oswego and surrounding rural areas, rang a doorbell on a brilliant Sunday morning and waited, clutching a handwritten list of voter addresses and names on a piece of lined paper.

Simons, who has spent almost his entire life in Oswego County, said he never dreamed of running for office. But his work history turned out to be perfect preparation for a hyperlocal campaign. He recently retired after years as an elementary school math and science teacher, and he still repairs hot rods and motorcycles on the side. He’s encountered a broad spectrum of humanity, he said, including many of the people he’s now asking to vote for him. He once bought a car from his opponent’s mother.

When an elderly man came to the door with a cane, Simons exclaimed: “You’re Jimmy Eckert’s uncle, aren’t you? I taught him how to drive his Camaro back in the day.”

“I know you did,” the man replied, smiling. “You’re running for something.”

“County legislator,” Simons confirmed.

“Good for you,” the man said. “I’ll certainly vote for you.”

New York Focus followed Simons, Stratton, and two other Democratic candidates as they canvassed over a recent weekend. Voters’ key concerns were varied and specific. Some were worried about the impending arrival of Micron’s $100 billion semiconductor plant complex near Syracuse, which will likely bring new residents and development to Oswego. One of those voters was equally anxious about the safety issues posed by Amish teenagers driving horses and buggies on highways alongside SUVs.

At one house, Stratton barely got through his pitch before the woman he was talking to interjected.

“There’s a beaver dam right over here that the fishermen keep fucking knocking down,” she said. The woman and her husband, who live along the Salmon River, said they had asked Pulaski’s mayor and other elected officials to do something about it, to no avail. Stratton offered praise for beavers but didn’t pledge to save the dam. The couple didn’t seem to mind.

One name rarely came up on the campaign trail: Trump. And the candidates didn’t share their party affiliation unless someone asked. (Gilson, Stratton’s opponent, views this as a tactic designed to confuse voters. “They will lie, they will mislead people,” he said of Democrats.)

When Quackenbush asked, Stratton told her he is running as a Democrat and as an independent. She voted for Trump in 2024 and still likes him, she told New York Focus, and plans to vote for Bruce Blakeman for governor and to reelect Tenney, whose office has helped her resolve issues with her social security benefits. She said that she also plans to vote for Stratton. Though she’d been hoping he was a Republican, his position on the independent line made her think he would be more open-minded than other Democrats. She also liked what she heard about his experience working for a federal agency.

More than anything else, though, she liked that he was standing on the sidewalk, talking to her.

“You got my vote just for taking the time,” Quackenbush said to Stratton before she and Peanut headed for home.

Hochul has kept more than $85,000 in contributions from at least 19 people she appointed to roles in state government, including officials in her cabinet, a New York Focus analysis found. Some of the donors said they would ask for refunds after inquiries this week.

In 2021, Hochul, like her predecessors, issued an executive order to limit donations from gubernatorial appointees, to guard against the possibility that officials would contribute money to keep their jobs. But Hochul doesn’t appear to be sticking to it.

Earlier this month, Hochul’s office told New York Focus that it is maintaining a controversial interpretation of the ethics rule that allows her to keep donations from her appointees, so long as the person serves a fixed term and doesn’t work for a public authority such as the MTA. That interpretation, first advanced by former Governor Andrew Cuomo, hinges on language in the order that bars donations from people who serve “at the pleasure of the Governor,” which the Hochul administration says would exclude anyone with a fixed term.

But Hochul has kept at least $25,000 in donations that may run afoul of even the narrow interpretation of the order.

Mark Gregorio, president of the TEI Group — an elevator service company in Queens — has donated $27,500 to Hochul since his 2022 appointment to the state’s Elevator Safety and Standards Advisory Board. He serves “at the pleasure” of the governor, according to state law. Hochul’s campaign has refunded him $18,500 but kept $9,000, the legal maximum for an individual donor in one election. He did not respond to an email requesting comment.

Amanda Lefton, commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, gave Hochul $100 about a month after she was confirmed last year to a post in which she too serves “at the pleasure of the governor.”

A DEC spokesperson told New York Focus that Lefton has requested a refund. She had paid to attend “a virtual event featuring multiple officials” and did not realize it was connected to the Hochul campaign, the spokesperson said.

Hochul has also kept donations from at least five people she appointed to public authorities, despite the executive order’s ban on donations from “a member of a public authority appointed by the Governor.” 

Walter Borisenok, a former food-products executive who now owns a thoroughbred horse farm in Saratoga County, has given Hochul $11,000 since she appointed him in 2024 to the board of the Thoroughbred Breeding and Development Fund Corporation, which uses gambling revenue to support racehorse breeders. Hochul refunded him $7,000, keeping the rest. He did not respond to an email.

Hochul has also taken $10,000 from Lisa Gomez, a real estate executive whom she appointed to the board of the state’s Dormitory Authority in 2022. Hochul elevated Gomez the following year to chair the powerful authority, which funds public construction projects.

A DASNY spokesperson said Hochul’s campaign “is refunding” the money, which came from three separate donations between 2024 and last month. A campaign spokesperson confirmed the planned refund.

The majority of the donations came from appointees whose terms are set in law — though some can still be fired by the governor, and many will seek reappointment.

Kevin Gershowitz, a recycling-company executive whom Hochul reappointed last year to the Long Island State Park, Recreation & Historic Preservation Commission, gave the governor $10,000 weeks after his appointment and serves a seven-year term. He did not respond to an email.

As recently as this month, Hochul accepted a $3,000 donation from a member of her cabinet: Walter Mosley, New York’s secretary of state. Under state law, the secretary of state keeps their position until the end of the term of the governor who appointed them, although governors can terminate department heads at any time if they decide it is in the public interest. The Department of State does not believe Mosley is covered by the order, a spokesperson said.

Reached for comment, a Hochul campaign spokesperson said only that the campaign would refund “relevant donations” to comply with the executive order. The campaign would not comment specifically about any of the donations highlighted by New York Focus, or about how it interprets the order.

Ethics watchdogs previously told New York Focus that Hochul’s interpretation of the order as allowing donations from fixed-term appointees was legally valid, but questionably restrictive.

John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, said that the donations from public authority officials and people serving non-fixed terms “violate the plain language intent” of Hochul’s executive order. He argued that the state should amend its laws to ban anyone hired or appointed by the governor from spending to support the governor’s campaign.

“Until then, we urge the governor to publicly ask those she has hired, nominated or appointed not to contribute to her campaign or political committees supporting her and pledge to refund contributions from them,” Kaehny said.

Hochul’s campaign has previously pledged to refund donations that don’t comply with the order, including last year, after Gothamist reported on more than $70,000 she had raised from appointees. None of the four donors named in that story has been fully refunded.

In at least one case, Hochul’s campaign refunded an official despite the governor’s office’s insistence that their donation was proper. Earlier this month, Hochul’s campaign refunded $1,378 contributed by Lily Fan, the chair of the State Liquor Authority, after New York Focus inquired about it. Yet the governor’s office maintained that Fan broke no rules with her donation, since she serves a fixed three-year term.

Hochul’s campaign did not say why it chose to refund Fan’s donation anyway. Fan also made a $40,000 donation to a pro-Hochul super PAC run by lobbyists at a top Albany firm, which has not been refunded.

Her offense was to run against the local Democratic party’s pick for the seat. 

“If you are a political appointee, you live by the sword and you die by the sword,” Yonkers Democratic Committee Chair Thomas G. Meier told the Hudson Valley Digger, which first reported the firing.

The upstart candidate, Leslye Oquendo-Thomas, continued her bid against former City Council Majority Leader Wilson Terrero — and lost by only four votes in the June primary.

Next Tuesday, she’ll get another chance.

She’s running against Terrero as the Working Families Party candidate, hoping to become the third politician in New York to ever beat a Democrat on the progressive party’s ballot line in a general election.

The race will test the power of a political machine that has reigned over New York’s third largest city for decades. As New York Focus examined last year, Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano has built a far-reaching political network that has handed out city jobs to dozens of the mayor’s relatives, stacked the city council and party organization with allies, and racked up accusations of retaliation against political opponents.

Spano has endorsed Terrero and financially supported his campaign. “If you want to be successful you need good partnerships,” Spano said in an endorsement video this week. “I could have never accomplished the things I’ve accomplished here in Yonkers without his support.”

Oquendo-Thomas says her race is a chance to break the stranglehold on Yonkers politics.

“The Spano machine controls everything in the city. It controls people’s jobs, and if you control people’s jobs, that means pretty much everything,” said Oquendo-Thomas. “Instead of encouraging civic engagement, they wanted to bully people away from running.”

Neither Terrero nor Spano responded to requests for comment.

Westchester’s 17-member Board of Legislators is the county’s main decision-making body, responsible for appropriating county funds, approving the budget, and acting as a check on the county executive. The board, much like the county at large, is solidly Democratic.

Oquendo-Thomas and Terrero are competing for an open seat in the county’s 17th district, a largely working-class, Latino area in southwest Yonkers. 

“The thing about Yonkers is that it’s a center of gravity for Westchester County,” said Jennifer Cabrera, a state co-chair of the New York Working Families Party. “If she wins, it shows that the machine does not have the grip on Yonkers that people have believed it always does.”

Terrero, a city employee who served as majority leader of the Yonkers City Council before Councilmember Corazon Pineda-Isaac unseated him in 2013, does not have a website outlining his policy positions. Instead, a link on his Instagram page, which is filled with endorsements, including Spano’s, connects to a donation platform.

Oquendo-Thomas, a former United Nations employee, was a legislative aide to Pineda-Isaac for 12 years before she launched her campaign with a platform focused on affordability and free buses in Southwest Yonkers.

New York Focus is launching a Westchester beat!

Do you live in Westchester or work in county politics? Reach out with story ideas, or just to say hi, at wesley@nysfocus.com.

Before publicizing her bid, Oquendo-Thomas says she approached Meier, the Yonkers Democratic Committee chair, in December to let him know she planned to run. According to Oquendo-Thomas, Meier asked her to stand down because the party had already planned to put its weight behind Terrero.

Meier did not respond to a request for comment from New York Focus. In the interview with the Hudson Valley Digger, Meier said Oquendo-Thomas had “gone against the party several times,” referring in part to the 2023 Yonkers mayoral election, when she collected signatures for her former boss Pineda-Isaac to run against Spano.

“You’ve got to keep your bosses happy,” Meier said. 

Oquendo-Thomas’s former boss emphasized that she was indeed happy. “I was happy with her and she did nothing wrong. She was not fired for performance reasons,” Pineda-Isaac told New York Focus.

While the majority leader in the city council is in charge of hiring and firing council aides, it’s been a long-standing practice for council members to choose their staff, according to former Yonkers City Council President Chuck Lesnick. 

But Pineda-Isaac was not notified before Council Majority Leader John Rubbo fired her aide.

“Legally, can it be done? Sure, but morally should that have been done? Absolutely not,” said Pineda-Isaac. “She had been with me for more than a decade serving constituents.”

Rubbo declined to comment on the firing, but sent a statement in support of Terrero. 

“Primary voters showed up. Democratic voters made their choice in the primary and I stand behind the Democratic nominee, Wilson Terrero for County Legislator,” said Rubbo. “As it relates to his opponent, I do not publicly discuss personnel issues.”

Fifteen of the legislature’s 17 seats are currently held by Democrats, while a Conservative and Republican hold one seat each.

It was somewhat of a gamble for the Working Families Party to endorse Oquendo-Thomas. The organization does not typically run its own candidates in general elections. Only two candidates in New York have ever won an election on its ballot line against a Democratic opponent, according to Cabrera, the Working Families Party state co-chair.

Those rare successes were now-Attorney General Letitia James’s New York City Council race in 2003 and Tamika Stewart’s Newburgh City Council bid in 2025. 

“Voters who may be accustomed to filling out the ballot on row A need to go to row D to find her name. That is the challenge,” said John Tomlin, founder of Taconic Strategies, a consulting firm in Westchester that worked on Effie Phillips-Staley’s progressive primary campaign for Congressional District 17. 

But the four-vote margin in the primary made a win feel possible, and the Working Families Party encouraged Oquendo-Thomas to stay in the race.

According to three Yonkers city officials, granted anonymity because they feared retaliation, Oquendo-Thomas’s firing elevated her profile as local voters learned about the context behind it. They said they were watching the race closely to see if a third party candidate could take on an entrenched party machine.

Late last month, Terrero had outraised his opponent by roughly $7,000, bringing in money from real estate, building, and other business interests along with contributions from Meier, Rubbo, and the local Democratic Party.

But as of Tuesday this week, Oquendo-Thomas closed that gap. She has notched noticeable gains, including raising funds from Building & Construction Trades Council and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers New York. Earlier this year, she received the endorsement of the influential health care union 1199SEIU. By Tuesday, she had raised $56,333 compared to Terrero’s $56,612.

Tomlin, of Taconic Strategies, thinks she has a shot. In hyper-local races like this one, the candidate that knocks on the most doors and engages with voters often wins, he said. 

“Leslye is doing that, Leslye is pounding the pavement,” said Tomlin. “This race means a whole lot more to this community beyond who is going to represent them in the county legislature. I think this is very much a generational question of: Do we want someone who is a fresh face or do we want someone who is connected to the establishment party who has been around for a long time?”

While New York’s gubernatorial and congressional races in next week’s midterm elections have dominated public attention, voters will also decide the fate of hundreds of lower-profile but highly consequential county legislature seats.

Check out New York Focus's tracker of every county legislature, and see which seats are up for grabs and which bodies could flip.

Counties function as the administrative arm of states. They run assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps), operate sheriff’s departments and jails, maintain roads and bridges, and help fund school districts and community colleges. To raise revenue, they levy sales and property taxes.

“For a lot of our residents,” said Joanne Cunningham, the chairwoman of the Albany County Legislature, “the entry point to Medicaid, SNAP benefits, food assistance, heating assistance, and housing assistance is through the county government.”

New York consists of 62 counties. The five counties that make up New York City (also known as boroughs) surrendered their authority to the municipal government when the city consolidated power in 1898. The five counties still retain borough presidents, but they no longer have independent power.

On Tuesday, just over half of the state’s 939 county legislative seats will be on the ballot. (Check out our tracker of all those races.) Here’s how these often-overlooked governments work.

What are county legislatures?

County legislatures are elected governing bodies that pass laws, appropriate the county budget, and conduct oversight. In some counties, these bodies also have executive power. In others, voters also elect a county executive, who can veto legislation, appoint department heads, and oversee day-to-day operations.

“The role of the county legislature is to check and balance against the county executive,” said Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York State Association of Counties. “Or if there is no county executive, the board is making those decisions.”

Rachel Barnhart, a member of the Monroe County Legislature, sees herself as a gadfly, spending most of her energy conducting oversight of county leaders.

“I’m very proud of passing the law requiring the sheriff to disclose when he purchases surveillance technology,” Barnhart said.

Besides oversight, legislatures’ most consequential task each year is passing a budget. The largest shares of county budgets tend to go to social services, public safety, and health. Lawmakers work with county agency leaders to balance their requests against available revenue.

Onondaga County Legislator Maurice Brown said he and his colleagues sought a compromise when the sheriff and county executive disagreed on appropriations for new squad cars this year.

“The sheriff needed $1.5 million, and the county executive offered them $250,000,” Brown said. “In the final budget, they got $750,000 because the legislature split the difference.”

County legislatures also pass legislation. For instance, several counties in New York have passed laws this year to ban the sale of kratom, an herb extract that acts as a stimulant. Counties have also passed legislation this year to regulate e-bikes, support Vision Zero implementation, and set taxes on short-term rental properties.

How do they differ from local and state bodies?

Counties are creatures of the state, carrying out its programs and policies on a regional level. For instance, counties help states administer vital programs like Medicaid.

“The way I think about it is we are service providers,” said Reed Cleland, a legislator for Cortland County. “Counties are service providers in ways that cities and towns and villages are not.”

Counties have the capacity to run complex operations that towns and villages can’t due to their small size. But counties and municipal governments often work hand in hand. Most members of boards of supervisors serve in both local and county government. Many counties and municipal governments also have shared-service agreements to coordinate tasks like plowing snow off the streets.

How much do they spend?

The 57 counties outside New York City have a combined revenue of about $37 billion, according to the New York State Association of Counties. That’s larger than the budgets of 23 US states. In addition to property tax and sales tax revenue, counties also receive funding from the state and federal governments. Next year, New York counties will have to spend an additional $1 billion to offset federal cuts to food stamps.

How big are they?

The average county has 16 members on its legislature or board of supervisors. Albany County’s legislature is the largest in the state with 39 members, and Franklin and Orleans Counties are tied for the smallest, at seven members each.

Barnhart said she thinks Monroe County could benefit from a smaller lawmaking body due to the challenges of adequately staffing and reaching consensus among 29 legislators. Small legislative districts also make recruiting candidates more difficult, she says.

“There’s not a huge bench of candidates really to run in some of these places,” Barnhart said.

What about boards of supervisors?

In New York, all counties were originally run by boards of supervisors, which mostly consisted of representatives elected to serve both their town and the county. Today, 16 counties still have a board of supervisors. Each supervisor’s vote is weighted by the population of the town or city they represent.

But most counties now operate on the county legislature model, in which legislators serve only as county officials. Balancing the dual responsibilities of town and county government can be a challenge for some supervisors, according to Jack Marren, the Victor Town Supervisor who serves on the Ontario Board of Supervisors. He said overworked representatives usually prioritize town governance.

“That’s not ideal,” said Marren, “but I understand that if they don’t take care of things at home, they may not be back [on the board] next year.”

Are county legislators paid?

Yes, but pay varies widely. Legislators are considered part-time in most counties, but several lawmakers told New York Focus that it can be a very time-consuming job.

“On paper, it’s definitely a part-time job, but especially around the budget, it’s full-time,” said Brown. “It’s rare that I’m spending less than 50 hours a week. You have to be informed.”

Onondaga County pays its legislators $39,794 a year — and that’s on the high side for the state. The average annual salary is only about $24,000.

As a legislator for Cortland County, Cleland makes $12,000 a year, one of the lowest county lawmaker salaries in the state. He also works full-time for a transportation nonprofit. Most of his colleagues in the legislature are retired, giving them flexibility to attend county meetings that regularly occur during the workday.

“I’m very fortunate to be able to work in a remote, hybrid capacity,” Cleland said. “If I didn’t, I’d have a very hard time being an elected official.”

How much power do they have?

New York’s larger counties tend to have an elected county executive who shares power with the legislature. (Other counties appoint a county manager, a full-time paid administrator who runs day-to-day operations.) Some county lawmakers told New York Focus that executives often overrule them on important decisions.

“We have a very strong county executive system [in Monroe County],” said Barnhart. “And the legislatures end up functioning more like a corporate or philanthropic board than a governing body.”

County executives often have more resources at their disposal than the part-time county representatives, Barnhart added. She thinks a smaller, full-time legislature with more staff could help level the playing field.

“We have to professionalize the legislature,” Barnhart said.

Now, James is trying to straddle the line: Her office helped draft legislation that could undermine the same tactic it has used to fight lawsuits alleging prison sexual abuse, New York Focus has learned.

The bill, which the legislature has passed but not yet sent to the governor, would allow people suing the state to add missing details or correct errors in their lawsuit by filing an “amended” claim.

That’s a common issue when it comes to allegations of sexual assault. Traumatized survivors may not recall specific details or recount them consistently, and formerly incarcerated victims may never have known the full names of the officers who allegedly assaulted them.

Nearly 1,700 current and former state prisoners filed sexual abuse lawsuits under a 2022 law known as the Adult Survivors Act. The law opened a year-long window for sexual assault victims to bring civil cases against their alleged abusers outside of the typical statutes of limitations.

During an interview with the New York Editorial Board last week, New York Focus Editor-in-Chief Akash Mehta pressed James about her office’s push to have many of the suits dismissed for lack of detail.

In most civil suits, claimants can initiate cases with limited details and uncover the rest through the litigation’s discovery process. When suing the state, however, claimants must assert the precise “time when,” “place where,” and “nature” of the alleged harm when they file the suit.

James’s office, charged with defending the state against these cases, has latched onto the strict filing parameters. Last year, attorneys for the state told a judge that they planned to ask to dismiss 500 of the prison claims based on the requirements, New York Focus and Hell Gate reported. By then, they had already succeeded in killing one case because the claimant’s lawyers had misstated the year the alleged abuse took place — a typo copied from the prison agency’s own records of the incident, the lawyers said.

For cases already in progress, like Adult Survivors Act lawsuits, the bill James supports would offer claimants up to a year after its effective date to ask a judge’s permission to file an amended claim, potentially giving them until spring 2028 if Governor Kathy Hochul signs it into law.

The bill wouldn’t exempt claimants from having to provide precise information about their abuse in the claim, James’s office explained.

“If passed, this legislation will allow for the correction of good-faith errors made in cases before the Court of Claims while also ensuring critical pleadings requirements are preserved to defend against potential future abuse of the system,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

That makes it different from a bill that survivors’ advocates have rallied behind. Last year, the Adult Survivors Act’s state Senate sponsor, Brad Hoylman-Sigal, introduced a bill that would exempt sexual abuse cases against the state from the strictest filing requirements. That bill and a new version introduced this year, sponsored by Senator Julia Salazar, both passed the Senate, but neither made it to a vote in the Assembly.

During the Editorial Board interview, Mehta asked James about the Salazar bill. James seemed to back it, adding that she wanted to work with the legislature next year to “address some of the deficiencies” in the law.

“And hopefully it’ll pass in the Assembly as well,” she said.

Asked later about James’s comments, however, a spokesperson for her office claimed she was actually referring to the bill allowing for amended claims, which has already passed both the Assembly and Senate. The spokesperson said she is reviewing the other bill.

Attorneys for the people who’ve filed prison Adult Survivors Act claims have excoriated James for her aggressive defense of the suits. They pointed to her recent statements in support of the alleged Cornell University gang rape victim, whose case Hochul assigned her office to investigate.

“The attorney general is publicly seeking justice for an Ivy League Jane Doe while aggressively moving to foreclose justice for 500 New York state prison Jane Does,” said Konstantin Yelisavetskiy, partner at the law firm Slater Slater Schulman, which represents over 1,200 people alleging prison abuse under the Adult Survivors Act.

He provided a list of six of his firm’s prison Adult Survivors Act cases that the attorney general’s office has so far moved to dismiss based on the strict filing requirements.

In one case, an assistant attorney general asked a judge to toss a lawsuit because a search of prison agency records supposedly turned up no evidence that the alleged abusers ever existed. New York Focus conducted its own search and, in February, found one former employee matching the formerly incarcerated woman’s description.

The attorney general’s office promptly rescinded its motion, and the case is ongoing. James acknowledged the error in last week’s interview, blaming the prison agency’s records management system. Going forward, she said, her office would “check with and require and demand” that the agency fully review its records.

In another case, a former prisoner recalled a corrections officer digitally penetrating her once and forcibly fondling her four times throughout October and November 2017. The woman recalled the officer’s last name, his height, his eye color, the shift he worked, and where he allegedly abused her. But her recollection of the timing was off by a couple of months, Yelisavetskiy said: The guard had retired late that summer. Rather than let the case proceed, the attorney general’s office moved to dismiss it, and the judge tossed it in April.

Asked about the dismissal motions in the New York Editorial Board interview, James claimed her office is moving to toss meritless suits.

“I think it’s a little bit more than just forgetting the names and the minor errors,” she said. “In most of the cases that we’ve dismissed, there is no basis in fact, and there’s a lot of omissions.”

“I’ve not changed my position,” she added.

Anna Kull, partner at Levy Konigsberg, which represents about 400 prison Adult Survivors Act claimants, argued that the state seems to treat these cases differently from other allegations of sexual abuse.

“The trauma suffered by the women abused in state custody should not be diminished because they were incarcerated,” she said. “Every survivor of sexual violence deserves an equal path to justice.”

In the immediate aftermath of the September 2025 murder, Haverstraw police said they had not determined a motive. And in the year since, no one has been arrested. 

But New York Focus has learned that before he was gunned down, King was poised to be a key prosecution witness in a Rockland County murder trial.

Years before his death, prosecutors had warned that King was in danger. King’s father told the district attorney’s office that he and his family had been approached by unnamed individuals and warned of “consequences” if King cooperated with law enforcement, according to court papers filed by the Rockland County District Attorney’s Office.

But a Rockland County judge denied their request to shield his identity, and it’s unclear whether prosecutors offered King any other witness protection while he waited to testify.

King’s death has quietly hung over the murder trial, which began earlier this month and is now reaching its conclusion. It raises troubling questions about what consequences his killing had on the case, and what steps authorities took to protect a witness they knew was at risk.

The murder trial stems from what prosecutors describe as an ongoing gang war between young men in Haverstraw, a town of 40,000 in northeastern Rockland County set amid hills overlooking the Hudson River, and Spring Valley, a village of 33,000 roughly 20 minutes southwest. 

King was associated with the Haverstraw faction, known as “HaviWorld,” according to a police detective’s summary of King’s account.

In the early morning hours of July 8, 2022, King said, he observed a “growing presence of individuals from Spring Valley” outside a crowded party in Nanuet, a Rockland County hamlet. King, who was then 19 years old, sent a message saying he felt threatened and outnumbered to a group chat including several individuals alleged to be part of HaviWorld. Among them were Anthony “Slice” Mitchell, Ahmad “Boogie” Williams, and Brian “BT” Thomas.

King told police that he picked up the three men with the intention of returning to the party, where they could show their own “presence.” Instead, according to King’s statement to police, Mitchell directed King to drive to Meadow Lane, an apartment complex in Spring Valley.

Outside the complex, 17-year-old Treynahel Cineus, who had also attended a party in Nanuet that night, was being dropped off at the Meadow Lane complex by his aunt.

According to police, King, who was driving a Toyota Camry, crept up beside their car. The men inside allegedly rolled down the passenger-side windows and opened fire at close range. 

His aunt ducked for safety. Cineus yelled for help before collapsing to the ground. When police and emergency medical services arrived, he was unconscious, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his chest. He was taken to a nearby hospital and pronounced dead about an hour later. He would have been a senior the following year at Ramapo High School. 

According to King’s account, the three other men in the car were the shooters — and argued boastfully on the escape home about who had fired the most shots. 

One of the alleged shooters later testified at trial that they didn’t know the identity of the person who was being dropped off. Members of Haviworld were “beefing” with people in the Spring Valley apartment complex, he said, and they simply hoped the person they were shooting was among them.

A Rockland County prosecutor has argued that Treynahel Cineus’s “mere existence” at the apartment complex motivated the shooting. “He existed in a place that was embroiled in a feud with [Mitchell] and individuals from Haverstraw,” he said. 

Rockland County District Attorney Thomas Walsh described Treynahel Cineus as an honor student who worked two jobs in high school, played basketball and was “an exceptional brother to his siblings.”

Cineus’s mother described her son as “kind, caring, loving. The best kid anyone could ever ask for.”

By tracking video surveillance showing the Camry’s movements, Spring Valley police were quickly able to identify King as the driver. Police interviewed him over the next two days and said he provided a detailed account of the night’s events. He agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and testified before a Rockland County grand jury, which indicted the three other men allegedly in the vehicle for second-degree murder and the attempted murder of Cineus’s aunt.

King’s cooperation likely put him in danger, prosecutors have alleged. About two months after Cineus’s murder, King’s father reported the alleged threat against his family.

To lower the risk of retaliation, prosecutors sought a protective order withholding information about King’s identity and cooperation from the defendants. But two of the defendants objected, and the Rockland County Court judge overseeing the case, Kevin Russo, denied the request. He issued an amended order allowing the defendants to view documents recounting King’s statements to authorities.

“There are no protective orders in place at this time,” Russo said during the November 2022 court appearance. “Any discovery may be shared with the defendants.” Russo’s rationale is not spelled out in public records. He declined to answer questions about the ruling from New York Focus, citing the ongoing case. 

Prosecutors sought an appellate court review of Russo’s order. But it’s not clear if the prosecutors filed the review within two business days, as required by law, and what information, if any, was provided to defendants in the meantime. 

An attorney for Mitchell from the Rockland County Public Defender’s Office, Walter Sakowski, told New York Focus he could not comment on whether any information about King was shared with his client before prosecutors sought the review.

The public defender’s office did not return an email seeking comment, and the attorney who represented King, Jeffrey Schonbrun, declined to answer questions. 

Sixteen days after Russo issued his order, the appellate court found that Russo’s decision to deny the protective order was an “improvident exercise of discretion” that did not adequately balance the defense’s need to prepare for trial with concern for witness safety and protection. 

Under that ruling, the defendants’ lawyers would continue to be privy to information about King’s identity and cooperation — but it would not be shared with the defendants until a month before trial.

New York has long struggled with the question of how to balance the need to protect witnesses with the need to offer criminal defendants a fair trial. For decades, prosecutors were largely allowed to withhold written and recorded witness statements until the beginning of trial. After Democrats took full control of the state legislature in 2019, the party pushed through sweeping discovery reforms, including much earlier access to such statements.

But some feel that push has gone too far. Senator Patricia Canzoneri-Fitzpatrick, a Republican, has sought legislation that would make it easier for prosecutors to withhold eyewitnesses’ identities, contact information, and statements when there’s a reasonable belief a defendant is involved with a criminal street gang. The bill has failed to gain traction in the Democratic-controlled state Senate.

“While we may not yet know for certain who is responsible for [King’s] murder,” she told New York Focus, “I believe my legislation would be a critical step in improving public safety by not only helping to ensure that witnesses are able to safely testify, but by helping prosecutors convince potential witnesses to come forward by bolstering their protections.”

Apart from their request to the judge, it’s not clear what prosecutors did to protect King. Under state regulations, a “primary agency” — often a district attorney — is required to notify a cooperating witness who has received such threats of “appropriate protective measures which are available in the jurisdiction,” including relocation and moving assistance. 

But compared with federal prosecutors, local district attorneys have relatively scant resources to help protect witnesses. 

“In general, witness protection is the stuff of movies,” said Babe Howell, a criminal law professor at City University of New York Law School. “I’ve never seen a local prosecutor provide witness protection.” 

“Witness protection seems to be limited to the highest of high-profile mafia cases and the like,” she said.

The New York Prosecutors Training Institute, a nonprofit, receives an average of $287,000 a year through the state budget for witness protection, which is meant to support 62 county district attorneys.

Sean Smith, the nonprofit’s executive director, said the limited funding allows the nonprofit to help district attorneys pay to put a witness in imminent danger in a hotel. It sometimes also pays for meals or moving expenses and is available when a DA “has exhausted other channels.”

“More funding is needed for witness protection. It’s a serious problem,” Smith said. “The discovery laws in 2019 were a cascading change where I think that this witness issue is one of the unforeseen consequences.” 

A bill introduced by Republican Assemblymember Michael Novakhov, the “Criminal Street Gang Abatement Act,” would allocate $5 million from the state budget for a new witness protection fund supporting local governments. 

The Rockland County District Attorney’s office declined to comment on whether it helped King relocate or whether it had funding to do so. County budget documents available online and dating back five years do not include a line item earmarked for witness protection. 

Two people with knowledge of King during this period told New York Focus they did not believe King received such assistance. 

For three years, the case faced a series of delays while King waited to testify. For a time, King did move to Pennsylvania to attend college. But he eventually returned to his family home on Clove Avenue in Haverstraw, not far from his old friends and gang activity. 

In September 2025, Judge Russo said at a court conference that if no new plea agreements were reached, hearings would begin ahead of trial. No new plea deals were reached. 

Six days later, on Sept. 9, 2025, masked men ambushed King outside his family home and killed him. 

Earlier this month, Anthony Mitchell’s trial for the murder of Treynahel Cineus began. The young man once expected to be the prosecution’s star witness was barely mentioned during opening statements before the Rockland County jury. The prosecution did not mention King’s death.

In a special hearing on the admissibility of King’s grand jury testimony last month, prosecutors sought to present proof that Mitchell, who was imprisoned at the time of King’s killing, played a role in preventing him from testifying.

According to a motion filed in July, prosecutors planned to discuss the intricacies of the alleged gang feud and evidence that the “close temporal relationship between the disclosure of King’s anticipated testimony and his subsequent homicide” provided more than a “speculative” basis to believe that “King’s unavailability may have been procured through wrongdoing.” 

After New York Focus sought a hearing transcript, Russo retroactively issued a sealing order, rendering the proceedings secret. Russo also sealed his ruling on whether King’s testimony could be presented to a jury. 

Regardless of the trial’s outcome, Mitchell faces substantial prison time: In April, he was sentenced to more than 11 years in prison on an unrelated federal charge, sexual enticement of a minor. In the murder case, he is the lone defendant who opted to take the case to a jury.

A second alleged shooter in the car that night, Ahmad Williams, pleaded guilty in April to a reduced charge of first-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to 10 years in state prison. He did not testify in Mitchell’s trial.

The third alleged shooter, Brian Thomas, has become a cooperating witness, striking a deal with prosecutors in mid-2025. In exchange for testifying truthfully at a trial, Thomas, who is already serving a concurrent three-year sentence in federal prison on an unrelated charge, received a maximum of 12 years for pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter in Cineus’s killing. But at the trial, his testimony presented problems for the prosecution that King’s may not have.

During cross-examination, Sakowski pressed Thomas on “four different versions” he’d provided of the night Cineus was killed.

After Thomas was indicted for murder, he at one point wrote a letter apologizing to Mitchell’s mother, stating that Mitchell was “innocent” and that his prior statements to police admitting to his and Mitchell’s involvement were a “string of lies.”

On the witness stand, Thomas testified that he wrote the letter out of “fear.” Following a court appearance in the murder case, while both were in a Rockland County holding cell, he said Mitchell had pressured him to write the letter. At the time, Thomas was being housed in a Westchester County jail where Mitchell’s alleged Bloods gang set, “Sex Money Murder,” was prevalent, Thomas said.

“I was frightened at the defendant’s reach,” he told the jury.

A law passed earlier this year prohibits counties from detaining people for ICE. Most county jails have stopped holding ICE detainees ahead of the law’s November 25 deadline. 

But the spending records offer a window into how New York county jails profited from President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, and help explain why some county sheriffs are fighting the new law.

The Orange County Jail, one of the largest ICE detention centers in the New York City area, billed ICE an average of more than $800,000 a month from January 2025 to July 2026, more than twice its average in 2024. The Broome County Jail, which did not detain people for ICE until after Trump took office in 2025, housed around 50 immigrants during a peak month and charged the agency nearly $170,000.

Four other counties held smaller numbers of ICE detainees but still brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nassau County, where county executive and gubernatorial hopeful Bruce Blakeman has expanded the county’s relationship with ICE, held dozens of people for the agency at a time. But the county has not yet turned over documents in response to New York Focus’s request under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

The records consist of monthly invoices county sheriffs sent to ICE and generally list the number of immigrants detained and the number of detention days. They reveal the pivotal role New York county jails played as part of a national network of detention sites during the historic surge in immigration arrests.

Available records show that New York county jails billed ICE nearly $18.1 million between January 2025 and July 2026. Those records don’t include the Nassau County Jail, one of the largest ICE detention centers in the state, though jail population data and ICE reimbursement rates suggest that the Long Island facility billed ICE at least $1.3 million since early 2025.

Some jails, such as Montgomery County’s, held people for a day or two before ICE transferred them elsewhere, the records show. Others functioned as long-term ICE detention centers, sometimes holding detainees for months at a time, contrary to their sheriffs’ claims.

Shortly after Broome County, on the Pennsylvania border, began housing ICE detainees, Sheriff Fred Akshar told constituents that most “do not stay longer than a week.” By this April, however, 18 of the 22 people the jail was holding for ICE had been there for months, a housing report shows. Five had arrived at the jail in summer 2025. The county charged ICE $110 per day for each detainee, reaching a total of over $1.2 million through this June. 

The Broome County records show the sheriff’s department also had to assign deputies to guard an ICE detainee at a hospital for nearly three months through the end of February. The county billed ICE $107,000 for the associated overtime. The records don’t explain the hospital stay, and the patient’s name was redacted.

Neither Akshar nor ICE responded to requests for comment.

Some sheriffs say the new law banning them from detaining people for ICE will eliminate an important revenue stream. Akshar and Orange County Sheriff Paul Arteta joined others in a lawsuit seeking to strike down the law, which Governor Kathy Hochul signed as part of the state budget in May. Their complaint claims that Orange County’s agreement with ICE has offset “a meaningful portion of the cost of operating the jail,” though it didn’t offer specific numbers.

Last year, Orange County billed ICE $8.4 million, up from $3.5 million in 2024, according to the records New York Focus obtained. The revenue rose not only because the jail held more people for ICE, but also because its reimbursement rate rose 75 percent, from $133 to $233 per detainee per day, starting in November 2025.

During the first seven months of 2026, the county billed ICE $7.2 million. 

The revenue increase came as a surprise to Orange County Legislator Matthew Fascaldi, who told New York Focus he hadn’t received recent figures from the sheriff.

“That’s pretty jarring,” he said.

While counties will no longer receive revenue from ICE, they also won’t incur the costs of housing the agency’s detainees. For David Favro, sheriff of Clinton County, at the northeast corner of the state, those costs were so significant that he stopped housing ICE detainees earlier this year.

“It was a financial decision, not a political decision,” he said.

Favro said ICE was paying his department $109 a night for each detainee.

Two county jails — Allegany and Niagara — provided ICE with its only bed space for women in western New York. Allegany billed the agency about $270,000 starting in February 2025, while Niagara billed about $415,000 starting in April 2025. By July 2026, neither held any ICE detainees, records show.

ICE is seeking to make up for that loss. Investigative Post reported that the agency plans to build a “soft-sided facility” at the large federal detention center in Batavia, outside Buffalo, to house up to 100 immigrant women.

Last week, in a unanimous vote, the state’s energy regulator greenlit two neighborhood-scale electrification projects known as “thermal energy networks,” while rejecting nine others. 

These networks aim to tap existing resources to heat and cool buildings instead of burning fossil fuels. Some circulate “waste” heat from sewage, data centers, subway tunnels, or other sources; others use geothermal drilling to draw on the stable temperatures in the earth’s crust. Most, like the newly approved projects in Buffalo and the Hudson Valley town of Haverstraw, do a combination of both, and then use electric heat pumps to turn that ambient energy into year-round heating and cooling.

By recycling waste heat, thermal energy networks offer what some analysts call “unmatched efficiency,” making them a top contender to replace aging gas systems. But they remain largely untested in the US. So far, only Framingham, Massachusetts, has such a system up and running, though Boston, Denver, and other cities are racing to build their own following a wave of enabling legislation across the country. 

Proponents of the systems, including environmentalists and some unions, see them as the most viable way to move New York off gas at the speed required by its climate law. The state will need to electrify nearly all homes and businesses by 2050 to achieve its net zero emissions target. Its roughly 6 million total buildings include some of the oldest housing stock in the country, making them particularly challenging to clean up. But state regulators say they need more proof that thermal networks are a cost-effective solution. 

The Buffalo and Haverstraw projects will now advance to final planning and, in principle, construction, making them New York’s first major test cases. They will cost a combined $112 million and heat and cool at least 32 buildings total, including dozens of apartments as well as public and commercial facilities. Both will serve areas that the state has identified as disadvantaged. 

The bulk of the upfront funding will come from the $1 billion climate fund included in this year’s state budget, meaning local customers won’t be on the hook.

As part of its decision last week, the Public Service Commission rejected nine other pilot projects across the state that utilities have spent four years and close to $50 million planning. They would have covered nearly 200 buildings total and cost $1 billion — a sum the commissioners ruled was too high to justify. 

Still, thermal energy proponents largely celebrated the order, touting it as a milestone for the technology. 

“It’s kind of a breakthrough step,” said Allison Considine, New York director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition. Her group helps spearhead UpgradeNY, a broad coalition of unions, environmentalists, and clean energy industry groups that led the charge for the 2022 law that spurred the pilots.

Considine said she was disappointed regulators didn’t approve more of the projects, but said the two that are moving ahead will go a long way in proving that the model can work in New York, and help bring union workers on board. 

Unions have rallied around thermal energy networks because they require mostly the same skills to build and maintain as gas and other pipe systems. That means they could allow utilities to go green while keeping current union workers employed. 

One union representative feels stung by the Public Service Commission’s decision to reject most of the projects, three of which would have been in New York City and six spanning from Westchester to Syracuse. 

“I came away from last week’s PSC meeting very disheartened,” said Brett Thomason, political director of Steamfitters Local 638, which is part of the UpgradeNY coalition. “It felt like they were sending a message that this is not something they want the utilities to do, and I think it’s shortsighted.” 

Thomason is particularly disappointed that regulators didn’t pick one of the New York City pilots, which would have offered a chance to work through the unique challenges of greening the city’s big buildings. 

“The fact that they couldn’t find a New York City pilot project to go through tells me that they’re not serious about learning about this technology,” he said. 

The Department of Public Service, which works alongside the commission, says its review weighed the projects’ benefits against affordability concerns.

“The two projects advanced by the Commission’s decision represent unprecedented strides toward implementing utility owned and operated thermal energy networks in New York State,” said spokesperson Kim Mashke in a statement. “Lessons learned … will establish an essential baseline to inform the evaluation of any future proposals.” 

In all cases — even the ones they approved — the agency found that it would be cheaper to electrify homes in the pilot areas one by one than at the neighborhood scale the projects proposed. Thermal networks face high upfront construction costs but also require ongoing maintenance and staffing. Privately owned ones need to pay property taxes, too, driving the lifetime cost even higher. 

In exchange, the networks put less strain on the grid than electrifying homes one by one. 

Proponents say the agency’s estimates inflate certain costs and fail to capture the technology’s full benefits — including creating and retaining union jobs.

“It was called the Utility Thermal Energy Network and Jobs Act,” Thomason said, referring to the 2022 law. “Jobs was in the description. And I feel like we got short shrift on the jobs aspect of it.”

New York is taking steps to advance thermal networks beyond the two pilot projects. Two SUNY campuses, in Buffalo and Purchase, are also building thermal networks with state funding. Meanwhile, under last week’s order, the commission and the state’s energy research and development arm, NYSERDA, will continue developing a roadmap for the model’s wider adoption. 

Other cities around the world have shown it’s possible. Thermal networks in Vancouver, Canada — which UpgradeNY toured in 2024 — already serve thousands of residents. In Scandinavia and other parts of Europe, they serve millions. 

Among those cheering the state’s decision was Buffalo Mayor Sean Ryan. 

“This is an opportunity to bring cleaner heating and cooling to affordable housing, modernize public infrastructure, and create opportunities for skilled workers, while demonstrating what’s possible when we invest in innovative approaches to meeting our energy needs,” he said in an emailed statement. 

Spokesperson Ian Ott added that the city worked with the local gas utility National Fuel on aspects of its pilot plan.

The utility itself, which has been one of the fiercest opponents of the state’s climate agenda, remains tentative about the plan. Michael Colpoys, president of National Fuel’s distribution arm, said in an emailed statement that the company is continuing to evaluate the project’s feasibility; the PSC approval, he said, “will allow us to continue engineering analysis, engage with prospective participants and gather valuable information about the potential role utility thermal energy networks could play in the future.” 

Thomason, of the pipe trades union, said New York had little choice but to push thermal networks forward. 

“It was frustrating to hear the PSC talk about these pilots as though it’s unproven technology,” he said. “How are you gonna continue to provide heating and cooling to your customers? This is the most scalable way to do it.”

Allen Caruso, a Republican running to unseat Capital Region Democratic Assemblymember Carrie Woerner this November, touts plans to slash taxes and end government benefits for “illegal immigrants.”

Thomas Kenny, who is running on the Working Families Party ballot line, promotes “working-class power.” 

“New York belongs to all of us — not the wealthy,” his website declares.

But the websites have more in common than meets the eye. Metadata reviewed by New York Focus shows that both sites were created by the same person — a Caruso campaign aide.

Since Kenny launched his campaign early this year, Democrats have suspected that he’s a spoiler, running on the left-leaning Working Families Party ballot line in order to siphon votes away from Woerner, the Democratic incumbent — the latest in a string of recent incidents of conservatives allegedly hijacking the party’s ballot line.

The Working Families Party has accused Republicans of “attempting to deceive voters” through Kenny’s candidacy. Until recently, Kenny was a member of the Conservative Party, which is supporting Caruso’s candidacy. In February, just ahead of a legal deadline, he changed his voter registration to Working Families. He then gathered enough petition signatures to run unopposed for the WFP nomination, taking local party leaders by surprise.

Kenny, who is 22 years old, previously denied allegations of ballot hijacking in a statement provided to the Times Union. The website metadata reviewed by New York Focus is the clearest indication of a link between the candidates’ campaigns.

Kenny declined to answer New York Focus’s questions about his website or whether he’s running as a spoiler. “Regardless of what the establishment Working Families Party and Carrie Woerner say about my candidacy, I was put on the ballot by the voters and I am the legal Working Families Party and No Kings candidate running for the Assembly in the 113th District,” Kenny said in an email. (He also successfully petitioned to run on an independent ballot line he created, called No Kings.)

Four graphics were uploaded to Kenny’s campaign website on the day it was created in April, metadata shows. They were all created by an account on Canva, a graphic design platform, belonging to the name Brandon Acres. 

The same Canva account was the source of five graphics uploaded between February and August to Caruso’s website.

The websites share another digital connection. The Squarespace account that created Kenny’s website was established on Feb. 5, 2025, at precisely 1:29:34 am, the site’s metadata shows. An account associated with Brandon Acres, listed as an author on Caruso’s website, has a creation timestamp matching to the second.

Kenny’s campaign has not reported paying Acres. But around the time he appears to have supplied graphics for Kenny’s site, Acres collected nearly $8,000 for his role as a “campaign worker” on Caruso’s campaign. More recently, Caruso’s campaign paid $100,000 to a new company Acres launched, Anderson Strategies, for “professional services.” Caruso recently described Acres as a “marketing consultant” to his campaign.

Acres is more than just a campaign aide. According to a 2016 Facebook post by Caruso’s mother, Acres was at that time the Republican candidate’s “boyfriend.” Acres is also Caruso’s longtime business partner, Politico reported. Acres did not respond to questions from New York Focus.

The race is considered competitive. There are more registered Republicans than Democrats in the district — which covers parts of Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties — and Woerner, who has represented the district since 2015, has had close races in the past. 

The Working Families Party blasted Caruso’s campaign in a statement. “Republicans have stolen ballot lines before, but never as brazenly as they did with Mr. Kenny,” said Gabriela Benazar Acosta, a party spokesperson. “It is abundantly clear that Thomas Kenny is likely a sock puppet of the GOP.”

In April, Woerner’s campaign helped fund an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to have Kenny removed from the Working Families line. Since then, Kenny has had virtually no public presence outside the website. The campaign has reported no expenses or donations from outside contributors. (Kenny — who works as a manager for an Amazon delivery station, according to a financial disclosure form — has reported putting $5,500 of his own money into the campaign.)

The candidates also share a connection on Venmo, the mobile payments service app.

As of early Monday, Kenny had four “friends” on Venmo. One was Caruso’s campaign manager, Everett Noakes, and two others were members of Noakes’s family. After New York Focus asked Kenny whether this indicated a financial connection between them, those “friends” disappeared from his profile. 

Kenny did not answer New York Focus’s questions about his relationship with Noakes. 

Caruso’s campaign did not answer questions about why a worker on its payroll built another candidate’s website or whether Kenny is running as a spoiler.

“I am 100% focused on the people of the 113th Assembly District and I am not aware of the inner workings of either of my opponents’ campaigns,” Caruso said in a statement.

Joe Suhrada, chairman of the Saratoga County Republican Party, said on Wednesday that the county party had “no knowledge of and no involvement in Thomas Kenny’s candidacy, his petitioning, or his campaign website.” He said it was “deeply concerning” for Caruso to “lend support to a campaign on the ultra-left Working Families Party line.”

The criticism comes at a moment of upheaval in the party. Earlier this week, Caruso’s campaign released a recording of a phone conversation in which Suhrada used racist and homophobic slurs, and Suhrada announced he would step down as chairman on Thursday.

New York’s unique fusion voting system allows candidates to run on multiple ballot lines in general elections: the Working Families Party frequently cross-endorses Democratic candidates, and the Conservative Party often supports Republicans. This opens the door for ballot hijacking. A candidate like Kenny can run in one of the minor parties’ primaries and win the nomination unopposed or beat another candidate with a small number of votes. In close races, those candidates could swing the November election.

In 2024, the WFP accused a former Republican, Anthony Frascone, of running on its line to benefit the candidacy of Republican US Rep. Mike Lawler. Nearly 200 Rockland County residents registered to be members of the WFP before the election, and Frascone ended up beating the Democrat with fewer than 300 votes.

Last year, in the race to run the 200,000-person Long Island town of ​​Huntington as town supervisor, a Republican beat a Democrat by 418 votes. An 83-year-old woman, Maria Delgado, got more than 1,200 votes on the Working Families line, but told Newsday she had no idea she was even on the ballot. (A group of volunteer firefighters led by a formerly Republican local power broker was behind the scheme to place her on the ballot, New York magazine later reported.)

In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a law allowing minor political parties to disenroll members determined to be “not in sympathy” with the parties’ core principles. But the process is cumbersome, and the Working Families Party has not yet moved to disenroll Kenny because he would have remained on the ballot either way.

“What’s your husband’s name?” the 911 dispatcher asked, according to a transcript of the call.

“Mike Baker,” she replied. “He’s a New York state trooper.”

A local police department responded to the call — but a State Police sergeant overheard the dispatch. Five of Baker’s colleagues rushed to the scene and took charge. Five minutes after the third State Police vehicle arrived, the local cops left.

A sergeant took Baker’s statement. Another interviewed his wife. She knew how the interaction would shake out.

“I’ve dealt with the police over these things before,” she told the officer, visibly bruised and crying, according to an incident report. “It always gets swept away.”

When domestic disputes turn violent, many survivors turn to the police, who respond to hundreds of thousands of such calls a year and receive training on how to handle them. But what happens when the alleged abusers are cops themselves?

The scenario isn’t hypothetical. While there’s seemingly no reliable data on the rate at which police commit domestic abuse, even the most conservative studies suggest that tens of thousands of current law enforcement families have experienced it. Yet most domestic violence reports don’t make it to court; survivors can be reluctant to involve the justice system, and prosecutors can find the cases difficult to build, experts say. For cases involving police, it’s often left to their departments to dole out consequences.

In those cases, officers of the law should be held to a higher standard of accountability than civilians, experts and law enforcement professionals assert. The International Association of Chiefs of Police advises police agencies to adopt “zero tolerance” policies and discipline officers found to have committed domestic violence with sanctions “up to or including termination.”

“You can’t allow people, if they’re accused of a violent crime, to work on the street,” said Mark Wynn, a former police lieutenant in the domestic violence unit at the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department and expert on domestic abuse prevention. “This person has a gun,” he said. “They have a badge, and they can use that authority.”

A spokesperson for the New York State Police said the department has “zero tolerance for domestic violence or misconduct by its members” — though the agency seems to have its own philosophy on how to enforce it.

A newly unearthed trove of police disciplinary records show that New York’s second-largest police force has minimized credible domestic violence allegations against its officers and staff. It has handed down token punishments for employees with substantiated domestic abuse allegations, including when they involve physical injuries and when officers used department resources to harass or intimidate their victims.

The records pertain to 18 State Police employees with domestic abuse allegations the department investigated and substantiated. Most of the alleged incidents took place between 2014 and 2024. Confidential under state law until 2020, the documents were collected over the past three years as part of a collaboration between New York Focus and MuckRock.

The files are not exhaustive. Like other New York law enforcement agencies, the State Police have aggressively resisted releasing discipline documents, leaving New York Focus to rely on those held by other police departments and district attorneys, who keep their own records on officers whose court testimony might be unreliable. They’re also limited to allegations that State Police investigators confirmed, leaving out debunked accusations as well as cases where there were not enough facts to prove or disprove an allegation.

Michael Baker told officers that his wife was the one who started hitting on that day in April 2019. Her being hit was a result of him acting in self defense, he said in a deposition. A State Police report accused her of harassment while another asserted that Baker hadn’t committed any offenses. Baker didn’t reply to requests for comment over text or email and hung up when reached by phone.

The files show many of the same patterns across decades. In 1998, trooper John Phelps got into a fight with his wife that led to her breaking a finger, according to a censure letter from the State Police. The department punished him with six months of work probation.

In 2003, trooper Rosnel Dorsainvil admitted to stuffing a sock in a woman’s mouth during a domestic incident, causing an unspecified injury, according to a disciplinary record. The State Police found that Dorsainvil had committed assault. If he had been arrested, he could have faced a year in jail and lost the right to carry a gun. Records show that the department punished him by ordering him to get counseling.

Four years later, trooper Luis Badillo tried to remove his child from his home. He kicked in a door (a move he’d pulled on duty and for which the State Police disciplined him a few months earlier), took his child, and physically confronted his wife on the lawn, according to his letter of censure. For this and two other incidents relating to his wife, the State Police suspended Badillo for 15 days and placed him on six months of work probation.

In 2013, trooper Thomas Khork’s wife came home to find her clothes in the front yard. Her drunk and angry husband, who believed she was cheating on him, told troopers he had punched out a window on his SUV and trashed the house, disciplinary records show. She hid behind their garage while waiting for police, who had to restrain Khork. They later found that he’d placed an AR-15 on a table near the kitchen and a Glock .45 handgun on their bed. Both guns were loaded, they wrote in a report.

The State Police put Khork on leave pending an investigation. Less than two weeks later, a supervisor wrote to the troop commander that Khork was fit to return to duty, though a State Police doctor who reviewed the case records disagreed, per two department memos and the State Police spokesperson. The State Police ended up punishing him with 14 days of suspension and a year’s probation. Around three years later, he was promoted to investigator.

Khork declined to comment, though a State Police spokesperson told New York Focus that he expressed remorse and regret immediately following the incident. Dorsainvil and Badillo did not respond to requests for comment by phone, text, email, mail, and social media. A relative of Phelps said that he did not wish to comment.

Seven of the 18 employees in the unearthed documents faced censure and five days or less of suspension or lost vacation, and some of those were put on work probation. Another five faced 10–30 days of suspension or lost vacation, while three faced only censure or no consequences at all. Only one employee was fired after an out-of-state domestic incident arrest led the State Police to uncover a pattern of other malfeasance, including evading tolls and drinking and having sex on the job.

A spokesperson for the State Police said in a statement that “allegations of domestic violence are very serious” and that “every allegation of domestic violence is taken seriously and subject to a thorough and impartial investigation.” The way police handle domestic complaints has changed over the years, the spokesperson said, pointing to cases where troopers have been arrested for domestic violence in recent years.

“We acknowledge that our sworn members must be held to a higher standard, since complaints of misconduct can undermine public trust and call into question a member’s judgement and fitness to serve,” the spokesperson said.

According to Wynn, the documents suggest that, in many cases, the State Police are “ignoring, enabling,” and “excusing” their officers’ domestic violence.

Three of the officers’ victims — whom New York Focus is not naming and each of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation — felt similarly.

“It makes you feel like you don’t have anybody protecting you,” one survivor said.

Even if the State Police files included every case the department investigated, they almost certainly still wouldn’t capture the full extent of domestic violence involving officers, as survivors often don’t report their abuse. All three survivors who spoke to New York Focus said that the domestic incidents in the disciplinary files are not the only ones they experienced.

Many fear that reporting can lead to stigma, worsen abuse, or negatively impact family relationships or finances. In Baker’s case, he told his wife that complaints made him look bad at work, according to a recorded phone call she played for a responding officer. She did not want to jeopardize his job, she told the State Police. They have three children together.

Reporting police abuse comes with the added concern that the case won’t go anywhere. “Honestly, he was a trooper. What was I supposed to do?” one survivor said.

Their fear is well founded, said Diane Wetendorf, an advocate, trainer, and consultant on police-perpetrated domestic violence. “A cop can whip out their badge anywhere to another cop and it’s going to be an immediate recognition of that respect of the brotherhood,” she said.

Officers know how to take advantage of that dynamic. Three and a half months after Baker allegedly injured his wife’s lip, they had an argument at their recently sold marital home, with each claiming the other was not supposed to be there. They both called 911.

“I want the police here … State Police please, only,” Baker told the dispatcher, according to a transcript of the call. Four of his colleagues responded to the scene.

The State Police spokesperson argued that “it would not be unusual” for police agencies to defer calls involving cops to their employers. Yet Seth Stoughton, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former police officer, said that it’s fairly typical for police departments to refer investigations involving their officers to outside agencies.

In at least eight domestic incidents outlined in the records, the State Police investigated their own employees.

“We understand why a criminal investigation involving one of our own members raises questions about impartiality,” the State Police spokesperson said. “Criminal investigations involving members meet the same standards of thoroughness and objectivity as any other criminal investigation.”

Even when other departments have responded to calls against state troopers, they’ve erred on the side of the officers, the documents show. After Baker’s wife’s lip was injured, a responding Oswego County sheriff’s deputy declined to write up a legally mandated domestic incident report, later saying in a sworn statement that he considered the case a “civil matter.”

“That documentation is very, very important,” said Judith Olin, director of the Family Violence and Women’s Rights Clinic at the University of Buffalo School of Law. Such reports help establish a pattern of abusive behavior, according to State Police training material, and include information that can help survivors access services.

Officers have also neglected to place troopers under arrest, even when they were legally supposed to, the documents show. Under state law, officers must make an arrest when they have “reasonable cause to believe” that someone committed a felony against a member of their family or household, they violated an order of protection, or they committed a misdemeanor family offense, like assaulting and injuring someone.

Reasonable cause is a low standard, noted Olin. Officers can establish it through, among other things, a victim’s statement, injuries or other physical signs of violence, or witness accounts, said Stoughton. Yet of the 18 employees with substantiated records of domestic incidents, New York Focus found evidence of only three facing arrest.

One reason cops might be reluctant to pursue domestic violence charges against fellow officers is that a domestic violence conviction can be career-ending, according to Stoughton: Federal law prohibits people convicted of it from owning a gun, as the State Police’s domestic violence training teaches. A gun is among the most significant risk factors for intimate partner homicide.

In addition to guns, members of law enforcement have access to surveillance tools and databases that contain sensitive information on civilians. Several employees named in the State Police records used police information systems to track or pester survivors.

Baker used the systems to gather information on his wife’s “male acquaintances,” the records show. In October 2018, he asked a trooper to run one of their names and license plates through a police database, an internal investigation found. The next month, while off duty, he ran the plates of cars parked near where his wife was living. And the following February, he ran the plate and driver’s license of a man whose car was parked in the driveway of the home where his wife was staying.

In a memo to his troop commander, Baker admitted to using police systems to get names of the individuals his wife was seeing. “I was concerned that [she] was allowing her acquaintances to drive vehicles registered and insured to me,” he wrote. He wanted “to make sure that they had valid licenses,” the memo said.

In 2010, the State Police wrote in a letter of reprimand that dispatcher Margaret Slater had been criminally charged for allegedly stalking a couple — a man she was seeing and his other partner, she said — and trespassing on the man’s property, among other offenses. An internal investigation found that she had retrieved the partner’s Department of Motor Vehicles files, and the State Police wrote that she violated an an order from a superior to refrain from contact. The department suspended her for 91 days and put her on a year of work probation.

In interviews with New York Focus, Slater asserted that she did nothing wrong, though she also said that she wasn’t totally innocent and gave varying explanations for the stalking and trespassing charges. She was a victim herself, she said: The man she says she was seeing had assaulted her the day she allegedly trespassed and he was never arrested, she claimed. (He didn’t respond to repeated outreach. Slater declined to send records from the incident, which the State Police said are sealed by law.) A court eventually dismissed criminal charges against her.

Nine years later, Slater followed the partner of another man she had been seeing to her home, driving behind her for almost 20 miles, and called two on-duty State Police employees to run the woman’s license plate, according to another letter of reprimand. The couple contacted the State Police to report her.

“If you had a good coworker who would cover you, they would say they didn’t remember [who ran the plate] but apparently, you know, people cave,” Slater told New York Focus.

During her time as a dispatcher, Slater said, other State Police employees regularly called in license plates for personal reasons. “A boss would call and be like, ‘Hey, there’s cars out front of my house, who is it?’” Slater said. “Why is it okay for you but not for me?”

The State Police twice told Slater to cease contact with the man and his partner. In the letter, they told her she could have been charged with harassment. For these incidents and others, the department gave her a year of probation and 10 days of suspension without pay.

“I make it up in overtime,” she told New York Focus. “It was like, ‘Hey, I just got a week’s vacation.’”

Slater’s suspensions amounted to the second most severe punishment among those in the files New York Focus reviewed.

“One of the big jokes with the State Police is it all depends who you are and who wants to mess with you,” she said.

That especially applies to gender, she said: “Women were not supposed to speak up.”

The State Police spokesperson said the department “strongly denied” favoritism in the investigative process. “Misconduct is investigated using the same process, regardless of the involved employee’s gender,” he said.

In 2011, a female State Police sergeant told her supervisor that her husband — another sergeant, named Kevin Streety — was involved in a domestic incident with her. Streety had lied to responding officers, saying the two sergeants had only had a verbal argument, and requested that officers not complete a domestic incident report, according to a State Police letter. During another incident, in front of their children, Streety disabled their home phone as his wife tried to call the police, the letter noted. Neither Streety nor his wife wanted criminal charges filed, and police decided not to arrest him, according to the State Police spokesperson. They could have charged him with criminal mischief, which is a mandatory arrest offense that could have lost him his right to carry a gun.

Instead, the State Police suspended Streety for three days and put him on six months of probation.

They handed his wife the same punishment: The couple had failed to report the incidents in a timely manner, her husband’s letter of censure read. 

“Not reporting is not unusual,” said Wynn, the former police lieutenant. “That’s the problem with officer-perpetrated” domestic violence.

Streety did not respond to requests for comment by phone, text, email, mail, or social media.

In Baker’s 2019 case that ended with his wife’s lip cut, the State Police found that he had escalated a verbal argument, misled 911 dispatchers to believe his wife had been following and harassing him, failed to report two previous domestic disputes, and repeatedly used division resources for non-police purposes. They suspended him for five days and placed him on six months of work probation.

Baker’s wife ended up calling 911 on him twice more — once after he, by his own admission, struck his son in the face to discipline him, which the responding officer said caused an abrasion inside his lip from his braces. The officer determined that it didn’t constitute child abuse or neglect, and the State Police didn’t discipline him. As of 2025, he still worked for the department, available records show.

According to Wynn, the State Police revelations illustrate why survivors may hesitate to come forward about police domestic abuse.

“If you were a wife of a trooper or an officer in the state and you knew this was going on,” he said, “would you report?”

Lily Fan, the chair and commissioner of the State Liquor Authority, donated $40,000 on Oct. 6 to a super PAC that has registered to support Hochul — and that is run by partners at a government relations firm that frequently lobbies Fan and her agency.

Fan also donated $1,378 directly to Hochul’s campaign in August, in what the campaign says was a purchase from its online merchandise store. The campaign told New York Focus it will refund the money spent on merchandise. But Hochul’s office insists there was nothing wrong with the purchase, nor with Fan’s donation to the super PAC.

Hochul appointed Fan in 2023 to the top job at the powerful agency, which regulates the production and sale of alcoholic beverages and issues licenses to all restaurants that serve alcohol. Fan was confirmed by the state Senate the following June to a fixed three-year term, meaning the governor must decide in 2027 whether to reappoint her.

New York governors have taken steps to limit appointees from donating to their campaigns, seeking to avoid the appearance that officials are being given jobs in exchange for contributions. Then-Governor Eliot Spitzer barred such donations under a 2007 executive order, which was revised and reissued in 2008 by his successor, David Paterson. Andrew Cuomo renewed the order immediately after taking office, as did Hochul when she assumed the governorship in 2021. The order prohibits state employees or officers who serve “at the pleasure of the Governor” from contributing to a governor’s campaign or to campaign committees organized to benefit them.

There is little precedent for Fan’s contributions. New York Focus could not find any other record of a Hochul appointee donating to a super PAC supporting her. Hochul’s campaign has seemingly kept some donations from other appointees, although they are overwhelmingly unpaid members of state boards.

Fan made the $40,000 donation to Women on the Move NY, a super PAC that was formed in August with plans to spend in support of Hochul, according to papers filed with the Board of Elections. The committee has ties to the top Albany lobbying firm Bolton-St. Johns: Its officers include Bolton’s managing partner, Emily Giske, and two other Bolton staffers, Wayne Kawadler and Brette McSweeney.

The only other donation to Women on the Move NY was $15,000 from the Eleanor Roosevelt Legacy Committee — a group that supports pro-choice candidates, which itself received a $10,000 donation from Fan in July. Women on the Move NY has not yet disclosed spending any money, with Hochul facing off against Republican Bruce Blakeman in the Nov. 3 general election.

The Hochul administration defended Fan’s donations. Jade Kraft, a spokesperson for the State Liquor Authority, said Fan’s contribution to Women on the Move NY was “reviewed and cleared by the SLA’s internal ethics counsel” and by the state’s Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government. Kraft added that the donation is “unrelated to any business before the SLA and will have no bearing on the agency’s review or handling of any matters.”

New York Focus asked the governor’s office how Fan’s donation squares with the executive order’s ban on donations to campaign committees “for the specific benefit of the Governor.” In response, Hochul spokesperson Kassandra White argued that the 2008 order predates the 2014 state law that officially recognized independent expenditure committees — meaning the order could not have “forbidden contributions to entities that had not been contemplated.”

Have a tip about elections, the State Liquor Authority, or something else? We want to hear from you. Reach out at nick@nysfocus.com.

When New York Focus inquired hours later about Fan’s separate donation to Hochul’s campaign, the governor’s office offered a new explanation: The order does not apply to Fan at all, since she does not serve “at the pleasure of the governor” but rather on a set three-year term.

That argument was first floated by attorneys for then-Governor Cuomo in 2018, after he came under scrutiny for accepting more than $800,000 from people he had appointed to state boards. But Cuomo’s reinterpretation of the order was controversial — Spitzer, who first issued the policy, told The New York Times that the order was meant to apply to all gubernatorial appointees.

That’s how Hochul’s team has previously summarized the order, too. “We’ve been clear from the beginning of Governor Hochul’s term that people who are appointed by her are prevented from donating once they are appointed,” a campaign spokesperson told The New York Times in 2022. Hochul’s campaign said last year that it would refund donations that it may have improperly accepted from people she had appointed to unpaid positions on state boards, Gothamist reported.

Two ethics experts reached by New York Focus disagreed with the Hochul administration’s claim that the order does not apply to donations to independent expenditure committees.

Ben Weinberg, director of public policy at Citizens Union, said the executive order “was clearly drafted with the understanding that public officials might try to get around the ban on direct contributions to the governor’s campaign by giving to another committee that supports the governor.”

“That’s exactly what independent expenditure committees are,” Weinberg said. “Reading the ban to exclude them would leave a giant, senseless loophole in that executive order.”

Alex Camarda, senior policy adviser at Reinvent Albany, pointed to research showing that independent expenditures existed in the US for decades before New York formally classified them in 2014 — which was intended to address the flood of outside money that followed the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. Camarda added that independent expenditure committees are a kind of political committee under state election law, which should make them subject to the order.

As for the claim that Fan should not be subject to the order because she serves a fixed term, both Camarda and Weinberg called Hochul’s interpretation narrow.

“The intent of the EO is clear in its opening clauses that state its rationale, and the governor can and should interpret it broadly,” Camarda said. “The SLA chair should not be making very large contributions that benefit the governor and influence the perception of or her actual governance of the SLA.”

Fan’s financial support for a PAC run by a top lobbying firm raises its own ethical questions. Bolton-St. Johns, which recently ranked as the number-three lobbying shop statewide by compensation, has reported lobbying Fan’s agency this year on behalf of three different clients: the major liquor distributor Southern Glazer’s, the Beer Wholesalers Association of New York State, and the Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan. The firm said it lobbied Fan directly for two of those three clients.

“Fan’s contribution will compromise her perceived or actual independence when considering matters before the SLA that involve the clients of Bolton St. Johns or other entities like MSG that have supported the governor’s opponent,” Camarda said — alluding to Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan’s multimillion-dollar spending for Blakeman.

Kraft, the Liquor Authority spokesperson, dismissed questions about whether Fan should recuse herself on matters involving Bolton-St. Johns. Kraft said there is only an “indirect personnel level connection” between the super PAC and the lobbying firm, and said that that “dual-role member” — an apparent reference to Giske — has no “direct involvement” with the firm’s work before the Liquor Authority.

The Hochul administration did not respond to questions about what specific guidance Fan received from the state’s Ethics Commission, and a commission spokesperson declined to share any details.

Fan has been a longtime donor to Democratic candidates — records show she has contributed more than $270,000 to dozens of candidates since 2009, including to Cuomo, Attorney General Letitia James, and to a super PAC supporting Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral bid last year. Before getting the SLA job, Fan was a lawyer and founded a theatrical and film production company.

This is not the first time Hochul has justified accepting donations from people in her administration. In 2022, a year after she took office, Hochul defended her decision to take more than $400,000 from members of state boards, The New York Times reported — arguing that it was Cuomo, not her, who had appointed them.

Super PACs backed by the sports betting industry have spent nearly $8.3 million on New York political races in 2026 so far, and have ramped up their general election spending in recent weeks. One of those super PACs, funded almost entirely by FanDuel and DraftKings, has spent over $3.5 million since the June primary — the second-highest sum of any super PAC this general election cycle. Most of that sum has gone out the door since September 1.

Called New York Future, the group has poured much of its cash into online ads supporting about a dozen incumbent Democrats, most of whom won their 2024 races by closer than average margins.

All of the candidates have voted in favor of minor sports betting regulations. The super PAC’s ads — seen more than 14 million times on Facebook, Instagram, Google, and YouTube combined — focus primarily on cost-of-living issues and never mention gambling.

One 15-second spot running on Meta platforms to boost Democratic state Senator Lea Webb highlighted her work on medical debt reform and eliminating insulin co-pays. 

Another ad criticized state Senator Chris Ryan’s Republican opponent for “proposed sweeping budget cuts that would defund local law enforcement.” New York Future’s mission, according to its website, is “electing strong, bold Democrats to state houses across the country.”

The industry is also focused on higher-profile races, donating close to $2 million to super PACs backing Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James.

“I think the target audience for these donations is probably as much the party leaders … as the individual candidates,” Rob Galbraith, an analyst at the watchdog group LittleSis, told New York Focus. “Helping maintain the party’s control, that good deed will hopefully be remembered down the line — and repaid.”

New York Future, DraftKings, and FanDuel did not respond to requests for comment.

In recent years, New York has largely been friendly to the industry. The state legalized mobile sports betting in 2022, allowing FanDuel, DraftKings, and other companies to obtain a license to operate within the state. Since then, the industry has generated more than $8 billion in gross revenue and over $91 billion in wagers, making New York the country’s largest online sports betting market.

But state officials have also raised concerns about gambling addiction fueled by sports betting, particularly among young people. According to a recent report from the state comptroller, calls to New York’s problem gambling hotline increased by 8.5 percent from 2020 to 2025, with mobile sports wagering cited as the top reason for calls since 2022. 

This spring, Hochul proposed new measures to curb gambling addiction, including by requiring sportsbooks to identify at-risk bettors and barring them from using artificial intelligence to target customers. The New York State Gaming Commission will vote on the regulations in the coming months.  

That hasn’t dissuaded the industry from backing the governor. Since early September, the trade group Sports Betting Alliance has donated $1.2 million to Greater Empire State, a super PAC run by the Democratic Governors Association, a political organization supporting her re-election. The Sports Betting Alliance and Hochul’s campaign declined to comment.

The companies’ ultimate goal is to legalize casino-style gambling apps, known as “iGaming,” which allow users to not only place sports bets on their phones but also play slots, blackjack, and more.

Since 2023, the Sports Betting Alliance has paid eight lobbying firms over $2 million total to influence legislation on online gambling, according to state filings, with a particular focus on iGaming. In the 2023–24 legislative session, it lobbied nearly every state lawmaker on the topic.

Despite the industry’s efforts, a state bill legalizing online casinos failed earlier this year to make it out of the Senate Racing, Gaming, and Wagering Committee. Since September 1, New York Future has spent just under $240,000 boosting committee member Senator Toby Ann Stavisky. 

Most of the super PAC’s backed candidates, including Stavisky, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Assemblymembers Bill Conrad and Jen Lunsford, whose campaigns New York Future is supporting with ads on Facebook and Instagram and featured on its website, told New York Focus they don’t know why the super PAC is endorsing them.

Lunsford has co-sponsored three bills that would apply some restrictions to online gambling: built-in bet limits, banning push notifications, and prohibiting people who commit crimes against athletes from wagering. Conrad and the other statehouse candidates New York Future is backing voted in favor of a 2025 law banning online sweepstakes casinos, which passed nearly unanimously.

Asked about the $2,500 New York Future reported spending to feature him on its site, Conrad said, “That’s a lot of money for a crappy website.”

The industry has made a significant investment to reelect the state’s top lawyer, too, at a time when she’s ramping up enforcement of its unlicensed competitors.

The Sports Betting Alliance, which counts FanDuel and DraftKings as members, spent half a million dollars on a new super PAC called NY Families Together that’s backing Attorney General Letitia James’s re-election campaign.

The group’s September 25 Board of Elections registration, which was obtained by New York Focus, shares several similarities with New York Future’s. Both list the same individuals as treasurer and consultant, and both super PACs are working with the Parkside Group, a top Democratic consulting firm that helped the party win control of the state Senate in 2018.

Like New York Future, the group’s ad spends have nothing to do with sports betting. As of October 18, the super PAC had spent nearly $488,000 on TV and digital advertisements, including a video that emphasizes James’s work recovering stolen wages, securing funds for patients overcharged for health care, and winning funding for opioid addiction treatment and recovery.

“NY Families Together supports Tish James for Attorney General because New York families deserve someone who will hold powerful interests accountable and protect their hard-earned money,” its website reads. NY Families Together and James’s campaign declined to comment. 

Super PACs “often have pretty innocuous-sounding names that can obscure the interest behind them” and “make them sound like they are local groups serving local interests,” said Joanna Zdanys, deputy director of elections and government at the Brennan Center for Justice. 

The industry’s spending in New York reflects a nationwide trend, Zdanys said.

“We are seeing the sports betting industry as one of the election’s biggest spenders this year,” she said. “It’s a rapidly growing industry, and because sports betting is largely regulated by state governments, they are spending millions of dollars lobbying state legislatures and influencing state-level elections.”

New York’s attorney general’s office has had a contentious relationship with parts of the sports betting industry. In 2015, under former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the office sued DraftKings and FanDuel, alleging that their daily fantasy sports contests constituted illegal gambling. Both companies had to pay $6 million to settle, and the dispute ended after New York legalized daily fantasy sports in 2016. 

Since James took over in 2019, the office has largely shifted its focus from enforcement against licensed sportsbooks to unlicensed prediction market operations that allow users to bet on the outcome of real-world events, including sports. In recent months, James and Hochul have announced two lawsuits, one against Kalshi and another against Polymarket, for allegedly exposing New Yorkers, including those under the legal gambling age of 21, to “serious personal and financial risk.”

DraftKings and FanDuel have embraced prediction markets in states where sports betting remains illegal, leading them to withdraw from a trade association that opposes prediction market models. But they remain part of the Sports Betting Alliance, whose website highlights the harms of unregulated sports betting and online casino gaming.

“One could reasonably presume that FanDuel and DraftKings would like to see prediction markets go away in their entirety,” said Marc Edelman, director of sports ethics at the Robert Zicklin Center for Corporate Integrity. “Because if prediction markets are deemed illegal in the state of New York, as they seem to be if they’re not licensed, then it would increase their market share.”

Important dates

This guide covers election processes as they're supposed  to happen. If you think there's a missing question, or encounter something different and want to share with a reporter, please reach out to Alex Arriaga at alex@nysfocus.com or on signal at alexarriaga.17.

• October 24: First day of early voting. Contact your local county to learn when your polling place is open.
• October 24: Last day to register to vote for the 2026 general election and the last day to request a mail-in ballot by mail or online.
• November 1: Last day of early voting.
• November 3: General Election Day! Polls are open from 6am to 9pm. Mail-in ballots must be postmarked by this day.
• November 10: Last day the Board of Elections will accept a ballot by mail. The US Post Office recommends voters send them by mail at least one week prior to the deadline.

Am I eligible to vote?

According to the New York State Board of Elections, you’re eligible to vote if you: 

• are a US citizen 
• are at least 18 years old 
• have been a New York state resident for at least 30 days before the election
• are not currently serving a prison sentence for a felony conviction
• have not been deemed mentally incompetent by a court, and
• have not claimed the right to vote elsewhere

How do I register to vote?

You can register:

• online using the state’s voter registration portal
• in person at your local County Board of Elections, DMV, or a state agency-based registration center, or 
• by mail by filling out a voter registration form and sending it to your local County Board of Elections. 

The registration deadline for the November 3 general election is October 24. 

To register, you’ll need to enter acceptable identification on your form. This can be either a driver’s license number, non-driver’s ID number, or the last four digits of your social security number. You can provide a copy of any of the following documents:

• current and valid photo ID
• current utility bill 
• bank statement
• government check or paycheck, or
• government document that shows name and address 

Learn more about how to register on the Board of Elections website. New York City residents can check their registration here.

Do I need to bring an ID?

You do not need to present identification to vote unless you did not provide valid identification at the time of registration. 

Where’s my polling place?

You can find your early voting and Election Day polling places using the Board of Elections voter lookup portal. Make sure to double check yours before venturing out to vote, as locations often change between elections and from early voting to Election Day.

What’s on my ballot?

• New Yorkers will be electing four state executive offices: governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and comptroller.
• Voters in each of the state’s 26 US House districts will elect their congressional representatives. 
• Voters will elect state senators in all 63 districts.
• Voters will elect state assemblymembers in all 150 districts.
• Voters in several counties will vote for their local sheriff. These counties are: Allegany, Broome, Cayuga, Chautauqua, Clinton, Dutchess, Essex, Franklin, Jefferson, Montgomery, Oneida, Onondaga, Ontario, Orange, Oswego, Otsego, Tompkins, Ulster, and Wyoming.
• New Yorkers in 41 counties are governed by elected county legislatures, according to the New York State Association of Counties. In counties that have one, those races will appear on local ballots. 
• There are no statewide ballot initiatives this election, but in some cities — like New York City, Albany, or Buffalo —  voters will be deciding on local ballot initiatives.
• See what’s on your ballot using this sample ballot generator from Ballotpedia, or by looking up your registration on this state website.

What is the difference between an absentee ballot and a mail-in ballot?

Anyone registered to vote can request an early mail ballot without a specific reason, thanks to the 2024 New York Early Mail Voter Act.. Use this portal to apply for one.

There are a few more qualifications to vote absentee. According to the state Board of Elections, you are eligible if you:

• will be absent from your county, or the five boroughs if you’re a New York City resident, on Election Day
• are unable to appear at the polls due to temporary or permanent illness or disability
• are unable to appear because you are the primary caregiver of someone who is ill or physically disabled
• are a resident or patient of a Veterans Health Administration Hospital, or
• are in jail or prison for any reason other than a felony conviction. You are eligible to vote if you are awaiting grand jury action, awaiting trial, or serving a sentence for a misdemeanor.

Either way, you can request that your ballot be delivered to your residence, a different address within or outside of the US, or in person at the board of elections.

Can I still vote in person if I received a mail ballot but didn’t send it back?

You may vote in person by bringing in your ballot to a poll site in your county on November 3 by 9 pm. If you decide to vote in person after you have already been issued an early mail, accessible, or absentee ballot, you cannot cast a ballot on a voting machine. You can have to vote with an affidavit ballot.

Does New York offer an accessible ballot?

Any New Yorker with a print disability can apply for an accessible ballot using this application portal. Print disabilities can include blindness, low vision, dyslexia, dysgraphia, learning disabilities, and physical disabilities that limit writing. In some counties, ballot marking devices are used to allow people with disabilities to vote independently and privately. You can see which counties use these machines on the Board of Elections list.

New York Focus’s Latest Coverage

Hochul Had to Return Millions. She Found a Workaround.

Fact Check: Can Bruce Blakeman Really Cut Utility Bills in Half?

Super PAC Could Herald Aggressive New Approach to Albany Lobbying

Blakeman Sought Matching Funds for Thousands of Ineligible Donations

I want more information.

• Here’s what you need to know about the New York governor’s race.
• If you live in New York City, you can read more about local ballot proposals from our partner, The City Reporter.
• For voters in Hudson Valley communities, here’s a guide from The Highlands Current.
• Here’s more information for Long Island voters.
• Central New York voters can use this voter guide by WRVO.
• Here are some voter resources for New Yorkers in Onondaga County.
• If you live in Rochester, our partners at WHEC created this voter guide.
• There are a few high-profile sheriff’s elections that our partner Bolts Mag included in their national roundup of sheriff and prosecutor elections.

This guide will be updated with additional voter guides and resources leading up to the election.

In New York, individuals can donate up to $9,000 to a candidate for statewide office in a primary election, and another $9,000 for the general election. Over the last four years, more than 500 donors gave Hochul the maximum $18,000, anticipating that she would face both a primary and general election challenge.

But the June Democratic primary for governor was canceled after Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado dropped his bid. That meant Hochul’s campaign was required to refund each donor who had given more than the $9,000 she could raise for the general election alone.

Since then, Hochul has indeed been refunding those donors. But in more than 360 instances, worth a combined $2.6 million, those refunded donors quickly gave identical amounts to the New York State Democratic Committee — which has spent millions on Hochul’s behalf and transferred $10 million to her campaign in September.

Methodology: New York Focus reviewed public disclosures from Hochul's campaign and the state Democratic Party. We found 363 instances between June and September in which donors received refunds from the Hochul campaign, then contributed identical amounts to the state party within three days.

The maneuver exploits a loophole in New York’s campaign finance system: While candidates face strict limits on how much they can raise from individual donors, political parties can collect much larger donations and transfer unlimited amounts to candidates.

Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the campaign contacted the donors after their money was refunded to inform them that they could donate to the state party to support Democratic candidates “up and down the ballot.” Those who said yes were given a form that allowed their reimbursed funds to be directed to the party committee, the spokesperson said.

Blair Horner, senior policy adviser for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the setup is legal, as long as donors were told they were giving to the party and not to Hochul through a backdoor. 

But Horner called the arrangement an example of how state officials have learned to game the system.

“It’s a ridiculous system that New York has, where the public thinks that campaign contributions are enforced, when in reality, for Albany’s fat cats, they’re not,” he said.

One donor, Lou Coletti, was refunded $9,000 on Sept. 17, then made a $9,000 donation to the state party the following day. Reached by phone, Coletti — a lobbyist and former head of a major contractors’ association — confirmed that Hochul’s campaign proposed he donate to the party after giving him a refund.

“​​I had maxed out with the governor, so they asked if I would consider supporting the party and I said yes,” Coletti said. Hochul’s name, he added, “never came up.”

In practice, however, Hochul has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the state party’s spending. The party’s $10 million transfer to her campaign is its largest single expense on record, dating back to 1999. The party has reported another $1.8 million in expenses for Hochul’s campaign, records show. All told, more than 80 percent of the money the party has spent or transferred in 2026 has been on Hochul’s behalf.

The refunded donors who made identical contributions to the state party include notable names: Steve Cohen, the New York Mets owner and casino developer; Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix; Leonard Blavatnik, a billionaire businessman; and a host of prominent city real estate executives. Political action committees run by US Representative Ritchie Torres, Montefiore Health System, the state Funeral Directors Association, and the horseracing industry, among others, also redirected their refunds.

Another 141 donors who were refunded more than $900,000 apparently opted against making matching contributions to the state Democratic Party. (They include Nancy McCartney, the spouse of Paul McCartney and ex-wife of Hochul’s Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman.)

Party committees have been useful fundraising tools for both Hochul and Blakeman, whose campaign has received about $3.5 million in transfers from the Nassau County Republican Committee.

Politicians have previously landed in hot water for using party committees to skirt fundraising limits. In 2014, aides to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio solicited donations to upstate party committees that far exceeded regular campaign donations as part of his effort to help Democrats take control of the state Senate. State prosecutors investigated the effort and declined to bring charges, but scolded de Blasio for making an “end run” around donation limits.

The complaint relied heavily on a recent report by New York Focus, which found that Blakeman’s campaign had requested matching dollars for thousands of donations that did not meet the requirements of New York’s public matching funds program.

Blakeman, currently the Nassau County executive, is mounting an underdog challenge to Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat seeking a second full term. 

Blakeman is participating in New York’s public campaign finance program, which offers gubernatorial candidates $6 in taxpayer money for every $1 they receive in small contributions from in-state donors.

But New York Focus found that Blakeman’s campaign had requested matching funds for over 2,600 donations that were either from out of state donors, too big to be eligible for matching funds, or both. The donations could have generated as much as $860,000 in matching funds.

New York Focus’s investigation was independent, and was neither requested nor suggested by any political actor or other outside party.

New York Democratic Party chair Jay Jacobs wrote that the thousands of mistakes amounted to “a scale that cannot be dismissed as clerical error,” and argued that until the Blakeman campaign fixes the errors, “the public cannot have confidence that a single additional taxpayer dollar is being paid out lawfully.”

Jacobs’s complaint also cited reporting from Newsday which found that the campaign had double- or triple-counted many contributions, potentially generating even more unearned matching funds. 

In an email, Blakeman spokesperson Madison Spanodemos said, “Kathy Hochul already tried to illegally block our matching funds once, and a judge stopped her. Now, with our ads exposing her tax and utility hikes, she’s trying again. She knows she’s in trouble, and this desperate attempt won’t save her.”

Polling shows Hochul with a significant lead over Blakeman.

The complaint asked the state’s Division of Election Law Enforcement to open an investigation into the campaign, and whether it knowingly provided false information in the error-riddled reports. 

Blakeman’s campaign has received $3.5 million in matching funds, the maximum for a candidate for governor. It’s not clear whether any of that was because of the ineligible contributions, since Blakeman’s campaign also received many contributions that did meet the eligibility requirements.

The Board of Elections maintains that it carefully audits all requests for matching funds to prevent ineligible donations from being matched.

Hochul’s campaign is not participating in the matching funds program. With $19 million in the bank, she holds a massive cash advantage over Blakeman, whose campaign has just $178,000.

A spokesperson for the Board of Elections declined to comment, citing the pending complaint.

The lone debate between the two candidates on Oct. 13 was emblematic of the race overall: heavy on attacks and ideological differences, with relatively little talk of concrete policy.

Early voting starts Oct. 24 for the Nov. 3 general election. Millions of dollars in ads are currently airing from both candidates’ campaigns and the corporate-backed super PACs supporting each of them. Here’s what else to know about the contest.

What’s the state of the race?

It’s Hochul’s race to lose, as a blue-state Democrat running in what could be a historically bad year for Republicans nationally. She has led in every public poll, though her recent margins have ranged from single digits to 19 points.

Still, allies of the governor say they think the race could be close, pointing to strong anti-incumbent sentiment nationwide. Hochul’s approval rating among voters has been middling for much of her five-year tenure, mostly hovering a few points below 50 percent.

Democrats also have fresh memories of Hochul’s last race in 2022, when she eked out a 6-point win over Republican Lee Zeldin — like Blakeman, a Trump-friendly Republican running in what was otherwise a not-great year for the GOP.

“I expect it to be closer than some of the public polling has suggested,” said Basil Smikle, a political strategist and former executive director of the New York State Democratic Party. “But I think she wins in November.”

Blakeman, aware of his uphill climb, began Tuesday’s debate by encouraging voters to take a chance on him: “What do you have to lose?”

Who’s got the money?

Hochul has out-raised and outspent Blakeman, and the Republican is entering the home stretch of the election with very little cash on hand.

Hochul’s campaign had about $19 million banked through September, compared to a measly $178,000 for Blakeman. Although Blakeman has raised more money at this stage than Zeldin had four years ago, he has spent nearly all of it, according to the latest filings.

Blakeman, unlike Hochul, is participating in the state’s matching funds program, which gives candidates $6 in taxpayer money for every $1 they receive from eligible New York residents. Blakeman has gotten $2.4 million in matching funds, although New York Focus reported that he improperly sought matches for more than 2,600 ineligible donations; it’s not clear whether the state actually matched any of those contributions.

Both candidates have also raised money for state party committees — and taken advantage of what Gothamist dubbed a legal loophole by accepting millions of dollars from those party accounts, which allow donors to skirt campaign contribution limits. Individuals can give up to $138,600 to a party committee in a single year, compared to just $9,000 to a campaign for governor.

The New York State Democratic Party transferred a whopping $10 million to Hochul’s campaign last month, and still had about $11 million left in its main account through September. The Nassau County Republican Committee, meanwhile, gave Blakeman $1.3 million and had about $2.6 million on hand.

Outside super PACs — which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money but can’t coordinate with candidates — are set to spend heavily, especially for Hochul. About a half dozen so-called independent expenditure committees have spent money in support of each candidate, and the groups had spent about $13.2 million as of Oct. 9 — more than double the amount of super PAC spending through the same period in 2022.

Hochul has benefited from the lion’s share of that spending, thanks to support from big players like Uber, the Greater New York Hospital Association, and the New York Apartment Association, a landlord group. The biggest donors to pro-Blakeman committees have included Madison Square Garden owner James Dolan and casino mogul Stephen Wynn.

One big spender is noticeably absent: cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder, who spent about $11 million on pro-Zeldin super PACs four years ago, helping fuel the Republican’s campaign. This year, Lauder has spent nothing on local races.

Kathryn Wylde, a Hochul ally and former president of the Partnership for New York City business group, said wealthy businesspeople see little reason to support Blakeman. Hochul, who has stood firm against raising income taxes despite pressure from progressives, would likely have more leverage over the Democratic state legislature than a Republican governor who would spar with Senate and Assembly leaders, she said.

“Most of them feel that given the state legislature and likelihood of a [Democratic] supermajority there, they’re better off with a Democratic governor that is difficult to override,” Wylde said. “She’s got leverage since they’re all supposed to be on one team.”

Light on policy

The race has not been heavy on policy details. Blakeman spent much of the debate blaming Hochul for the state’s affordability crisis, while Hochul repeatedly tied Blakeman to President Donald Trump.

Blakeman has centered his campaign on a pledge to eliminate income taxes for individuals earning below $50,000 and married couples making under $100,000, as well as an across-the-board 10-percent tax cut for incomes below $250,000. 

But Blakeman has offered few specifics on how he would pay for the tax cut, which his campaign estimates would cost $35 billion. Blakeman has been similarly vague about his pledge to cut electric bills “in half” in his first day in office — a promise that experts call unrealistic.

The Republican has blamed Hochul for rising utility bills and nicknamed her “High-Tax Hochul” — although Hochul has passed multiple tax cuts for middle-income filers during her tenure. Blakeman has also focused on tying Hochul to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whom he has repeatedly labeled a communist and an anti-Semite.

Although Blakeman consistently criticizes Hochul as a free-spending Democrat, some fiscal conservatives have faulted Blakeman for not presenting his own plan to constrain the state’s budget.

“Blakeman has inherited the problem that Albany Republicans created by being unserious about the state’s spending problems,” said Ken Girardin, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

Hochul is running on her record — with her first television ads touting her record of tax cuts and the introduction of universal free school meals. She has also emphasized Blakeman’s coziness with Trump, who has an abysmal 29 percent approval rating in New York, according to a September Quinnipiac University poll.

The debate showcased stark differences on immigration policy. Blakeman condemned the Hochul-backed deal that limited state and local cooperation with federal authorities, while Hochul accused Blakeman of condoning recent violence committed by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

What do voters care about?

New Yorkers rank pocketbook issues far above all other concerns this election. The cost of living was the top issue named by 28 percent of likely voters in the Quinnipiac poll, followed by the economy at 21 percent; no other issue was higher than 11 percent. 

Other seemingly hot-button topics are not at the front of most voters’ minds. Nine percent of voters ranked immigration as the top issue; energy costs and AI data centers each garnered 3 percent.

“The only thing is the affordability crisis,” said Josh Gold, senior director of public policy and communications for Uber. The rideshare company is spending $2.5 million to back Hochul through a super PAC after she pushed auto-insurance reforms through the state budget that Uber supported.

Voters’ priorities vary slightly in different parts of the state. Upstate and suburban residents were more likely to point to taxes and health care in the Quinnipiac poll, while slightly more New York City voters chose immigration and affordable housing.

Benjy Sachs contributed reporting.

“On day one when I become governor, I will cut your electric bills in half,” said Blakeman, the Nassau County executive and GOP challenger to Governor Kathy Hochul, during a campaign stop this spring. That promise has become a centerpiece of his campaign, boosted by millions of dollars in TV and online ads. 

But can he actually do that on his first day in office — or at all? Probably not. Here’s a closer look.

What Is Blakeman’s Plan?

Blakeman has offered next to no detail about how he intends to slash bills by half. His website provides no policy platform. In public appearances and media interviews, he has blamed the “green energy scam” for driving up bills and promised to allow New York to produce its own gas through fracking, a practice that is currently illegal.

The lack of specificity has disappointed even some on the right. “Blakeman has been unable to provide anything resembling a credible strategy” for cutting bills in half, wrote Ken Girardin, a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, in May.

Environmental groups have likewise scoffed.

“It’s just a lie,” said Julie Tighe, president of the New York League of Conservation Voters, of Blakeman’s pledge. Donald Trump made the same promise in 2024, Tighe noted, and energy bills have only gone up. (Her group’s political arm has helped bankroll a $500,000 ad campaign targeting Blakeman over his ties to Trump.) 

Reached by New York Focus, Blakeman’s campaign offered a bit more detail in a statement blaming Hochul for making New York “unlivable” and driving up electric bills by 50 percent. His proposed solution: “taking the $2.4 billion sitting idle in Hochul’s unspent Energy Tax slush fund and returning it straight to ratepayers as an immediate credit, permanently eliminating the System Benefit Charge from your monthly bill, and scrapping the radical carbon mandates driving up delivery rates.”

“Radical Carbon Mandates”

Blakeman’s main target is a set of utility bill surcharges that go toward funding the state’s transition to renewable energy.

State policymakers instituted the “System Benefit Charge” in 1996 and have since tacked on more to support wind, solar, nuclear, and other clean energy. 

Those charges now total some $1.3 billion a year, managed by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, the state entity guiding the transition. They remain the state’s largest source of clean energy funding. 

But they make up a small share of overall bills: anywhere from 5 to 9.5 percent of the average household electric bill in 2024, or $10 to $12 per month, depending on the utility, according to the state Department of Public Service. 

Critics of New York’s energy policies say there are other green costs hidden in people’s bills that the governor could cut. For instance, New Yorkers pay more than $500 million a year into a regional cap and trade program, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI, which has helped cut pollution from power plants. That adds another few dollars to electric bills in some parts of the state, estimates Girardin. 

“You could pull out of RGGI tomorrow,” Girardin said. Pennsylvania did so last year, following Virginia the year before — though Virginia has since rejoined.

Tighe says leaving RGGI would be “penny wise and pound foolish.” NYSERDA estimates that the program’s investments in areas like energy efficiency will eventually save customers $6 for every $1 spent. 

That’s once the money’s spent. Between utility surcharges and RGGI, NYSERDA has collected significantly more in recent years than it’s been able to reinvest. According to its latest financial statement, the authority ended last year with more than $2 billion in the bank for its core programs — up from less than $500 million in 2021. This is what Blakeman calls an “Energy Tax slush fund” and wants to redistribute to customers. 

NYSERDA says it’s just prudent budgeting. In a statement, spokesperson Aron Ashrafioun said the authority carefully plans its spending across multiple years and, to protect ratepayers, only pays for projects once they’re completed.

Even if a new governor were to scrap New York’s full slate of green programs overnight, they would still need to tackle the bigger factors driving up bills — above all, the costs of upgrading the state’s aging grid. 

“It’s very expensive to build out the grid,” said Charles Hua, executive director of the national, nonpartisan utility reform group PowerLines. “And then extreme weather events certainly don’t help.”

More Gas, Nuclear

The second part of Blakeman’s savings pitch? “Instead of buying expensive imported electricity, we tap into our own local natural gas and expand nuclear energy to generate cheap, reliable, New York–made power,” he told New York Focus. 

That would first of all mean reversing New York’s decade-old ban on fracking. The legislature codified that ban in 2020, meaning Blakeman would need to convince the heavily Democratic state Senate and Assembly — which passed an additional fracking ban in 2024 — to reverse course. 

There is one arena where a Republican governor might have a chance at doing so: the state budget process, where the governor holds disproportionate leverage. Girardin noted that Hochul has used that leverage to pass lots of policies unpopular with the legislature; this year, that included a major rollback of the state’s climate law, which most Democrats initially rebuffed. 

Even if New York did eventually begin fracking for gas, the prices would remain subject to the whims of an increasingly global market, making the impact on local utility bills hard to predict. 

As for new nuclear, Hochul is already pursuing one of the most ambitious nuclear energy plans in the country. The potential impact on utility bills, however, is hotly debated, with upfront costs expected to run into the tens of billions. 

The Bottom Line

Governors do have power to cut consumers’ energy bills, stressed Hua, of PowerLines. 

In New York, for example, the governor appoints the seven commissioners in charge of approving or denying utilities’ requests to hike the rates customers pay. Those commissioners in turn can ratchet up scrutiny of the billions of dollars in infrastructure spending that make up the lion’s share of what utilities charge for. But Hua said it would take time.

“​​We have a century-old utility regulatory system that’s like a tanker ship,” he said. “It’s not going to just steer itself into a more consumer-friendly mode.”

Hochul took several steps toward tightening utility oversight in this year’s budget. She also created a new smart thermostat program, dubbed Excelsior Power, aiming to wring more power out of the existing grid. Experts see this as a key step toward reining in bills in the near term. 

“Bruce Blakeman can make up false promises all he wants,” wrote Hochul’s campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki in an email. “Governor Hochul has actually taken on the utility companies themselves to cut energy costs, made big data centers pay for the energy they use, and passed a billion-dollar energy rebate package to put money back in New Yorkers’ pockets.”

Blakeman has vowed to overturn Hochul’s data center moratorium and slammed the rebates as “peanuts.”

His campaign did not respond to follow-ups about how his proposed policies would cut bills in half. 

Girardin, of the Manhattan Institute, said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility — particularly for parts of the state where bills have doubled in less than a decade. But he acknowledged that Blakeman has put forward “no plan” for how to do it. 

“I think it would be better for everybody if elected officials explained the how, not just the what,” he said.

Without statewide standards, there’s a wide range of answers, from outright AI bans to policies that encourage integrating the technology into classroom instruction. Many districts have avoided addressing it altogether. 

New York Focus built an AI crawler to scrape AI policies from all of the state’s 678 school districts’ websites and third-party school board platforms. A reporter manually fact-checked the outputs, summarized policies, and reached out to every district for which the tool found no policy. Those responses are summarized in a table at the end of the story.

A New York Focus analysis of roughly 680 school district websites and school board manuals found that more than half lack formal, board-adopted AI policies. Around 270 have formal AI policies, most of which support “responsible AI use” to improve instruction. 

The analysis offers the first comprehensive look at how school districts across the state are creating and enforcing AI standards in the classroom. New York Focus reached out to the roughly 400 districts for which the tool found no formal AI policy online. More than 70 confirmed that they did not have a board policy in place, 39 of which said they planned to develop one during the current school year. 

Some districts without formal board policies do have internal guidelines for students and teachers. A board-adopted policy, however, establishes an official districtwide rule that carries greater authority and tends to be more enforceable. (Information on districts that reported having other AI guidelines is included in the table at the bottom of the page.)

Districts without formal policies often still use AI regularly. For example, Nassau County’s Rockville Centre Union Free School District does not have a board policy, but at a board meeting last spring, a principal presented the district’s efforts to integrate AI across all of its schools. Elementary school students at the meeting shared how they were using the technology in the classroom, including programming an AI chatbot to take on the persona of Amelia Earhart so they could ask it questions. 

School district AI policies tend to focus on broader principles like upholding academic integrity rather than outlining specific uses, explained Victor Lee, professor and faculty lead for the Stanford University Accelerator for Learning’s initiative on AI and education. He said that approach makes sense given how quickly the technology is changing, but it can also confuse staff. 

“I think part of the challenge is it’s not always clear where the AI ends or where it doesn’t really apply, because companies are integrating AI into so many things,” said Lee. 

Few issues are reshaping education as rapidly as the rise of AI. Since the pandemic, school districts have poured millions of dollars into purchasing AI-powered tools designed to automate administrative tasks, personalize learning for students, and generate lesson plans.

Joseph Hochreiter, superintendent of the City School District of Albany, said district leaders are caught between competing perspectives: those of parents who remain skeptical of the technology and are encouraging districts to pause their use of AI, versus a business community that argues students need to learn how to use it in order to be competitive in the workforce. 

“It’s a really hard place for public education to be right now,” Hochreiter told New York Focus. 

Albany is among dozens of districts that have adopted policies using sample language from the New York State School Boards Association, which encourages “responsible and effective use of GenAI” to support academics and district operations. Hochreiter believes the state should develop standards outlining acceptable AI use by grade levels, but shouldn’t go as far as banning it because that will set districts “further behind.” 

Several districts told New York Focus that they were waiting for more guidance from the New York State Education Department. 

In a statement, the agency said it is working to engage educators, stakeholders, and experts to guide its approach. “The governor has signaled that she is focused on the responsible use of digital tools,” NYSED Spokesperson Karen Male wrote. “Meanwhile, the department continues to develop comprehensive statewide guidance to support emerging technologies in schools.” 

It’s not just New York. Across the country, school district AI policies “are all over the place,” said Bree Dusseault, principal and managing director at the research organization Center on Reinventing Public Education. They range from just a few sentences embedded into existing handbooks to entirely new standalone documents. Some are highly technical and largely inaccessible to parents, students, and teachers, while others are more thoughtful and “explain the strategic nature of why they’re making these policy shifts before explaining the policy,” she said. 

Dusseault said New York should set procurement standards and help school districts evaluate AI vendors in an oversaturated market.

One nationwide report found that the districts have access to an average of nearly 3,000 different tools. “I think the state has a role to play to help improve the quality of AI tools by setting clear parameters around what’s permissible.”

Introduced in August, state Senator Andrew Gounardes’s FOCUS Act would require ed tech companies to register with the state attorney general before offering products to school districts. To be approved, they would have to demonstrate that their products are in compliance with state and federal education laws, don’t include distracting features, and have been proven by at least one independent study toy improve student academic performance. 

But for some superintendents, it’s important for any statewide standards to strike a delicate balance. Yonkers Public Schools Superintendent Anibal Soler Jr. thinks that the state should still grant districts flexibility in how they address AI use within their communities. 

“I’m all for pausing if that’s what makes sense, but what’s our goal? Are we going back to teaching cursive and writing? And if we are, is the world going back to cursive and writing? Soler said.

“Banning it is the easy way out because it doesn’t force us to have tough conversations.”

Samuels, whose docket included nearly 200 cases that Friday morning in September, could see none of that. Like many of the new immigration judges in New York and around the country, she was working remotely from an undisclosed location. The new judges are part of a hiring surge by the Department of Justice, which launched a recruiting campaign encouraging lawyers to serve as “deportation judges.”

Over three days in September, New York Focus observed proceedings before 23 judges at 26 Federal Plaza, one of the busiest immigration courts in the United States. Ten of them — almost all new hires — appeared via video, rather than in person at the dais. One, who said he was based in south Florida, presided over a docket in which immigrants were directed to a secretive courtroom on the third floor, while a Department of Homeland Security attorney participated in person in another room.

Since the Covid pandemic, a significant share of hearings have been conducted via teleconferencing. But former judges told New York Focus that, with the exception of the Covid-era, judges have almost always worked from physical courtrooms and lived within commuting distance.

The move toward remote judges is only one small change amid an upheaval in the country’s immigration courts under President Donald Trump. Others, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s push to arrest people at their hearings and the administration’s efforts to keep people locked up while their cases proceed, have surely been more consequential.

But inside 26 Federal Plaza, the increasing prevalence of judges conducting proceedings via video conferencing, as dozens of anxious people fill their courtrooms, is an unmissable sign of the administration’s efforts to speed up deportations by any means possible.

Some longtime court watchers say the shift has sometimes made it harder for people to communicate with the judges who decide whether they will be deported, and prevented judges from reviewing documents people bring with them. It’s also unfair, according to some former immigration judges, attorneys, and immigrants who have cases with remote judges.

“If I have to come in, why doesn’t the judge have to come in?” said immigration attorney Victor Ocampo, standing in the hallway outside Samuels’s courtroom. Ocampo said he had to wake up at 5:30 am to get to court by 8 to meet his client, who is from Ecuador. Samuels’s assistant ended up telling them they could leave without even seeing the judge.

Ocampo said he had no idea where Samuels was.

“I just know she’s not in there,” he said, gesturing toward the courtroom.

A Moroccan man who appeared via video told Samuels that he had tried to change his court proceedings to Chicago, where he now lives. Samuels knows Chicago well; she spent her legal career there before becoming an immigration judge, with about 20 years in private practice and a decade as an administrative law judge. New York Focus could find no indication in public records that Samuels has relocated. A person who looks identical was reached by phone at a number listed on her state attorney registration but, through her assistant, denied being an immigration judge.

Samuels told the Moroccan man he had to be in New York City in person in five days, unless he could get his venue changed.

“I work now,” he said through an Arabic interpreter. “I can’t go to New York.”

She suggested he go to the courthouse in Chicago to ask for help but denied his request for more time to do that.

“No, that’s the time I’m giving you,” she said. “I have to be consistent.”

The Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which runs the country’s immigration courts, did not answer questions about how many judges are working remotely. A spokesperson defended the arrangement.

“All immigration judges, whether they conduct hearings in person or internet-based, are independent adjudicators and decide all matters before them on a case-by-case basis, according to U.S. immigration law, regulations, and precedent decisions,” the spokesperson, Kathryn Mattingly, said.

Samuels and the other new remote judges typically appear in their courtrooms on television screens. Their heads and shoulders — covered in black judicial robes — float against an official blue background emblazoned with the seal of the Executive Office of Immigration Review. A camera points toward the courtroom, allowing the judge a view of the attorneys on both sides and the people inside the courtroom waiting their turn to speak.

Samuels’s docket often lists dozens of people. Her legal assistant, who is at the courthouse in person, clutches a printout of the docket and tells people when they can enter the courtroom, or leave without actually seeing the judge.

“I don’t know what happened,” Sandra, a mother in her 20s from Colombia, told New York Focus in Spanish after being sent away. “I didn’t understand anything.”

A Spanish-speaking attorney who overheard the interaction explained to her that because the judge had already established the deadline for her to submit evidence to fight deportation, she was allowed to leave after checking in with the legal assistant. The attorney said she should consult her lawyer, whom the woman hadn’t heard from recently and who hadn’t shown up that day.

As she gathered her 6-year-old daughter and started for home, Sandra said it was lucky that she had found out about the hearing at all. She only spotted it because she checks the EOIR website constantly.

Not all immigration judges are allowed to work remotely. The privilege appears to be reserved for new hires, as the EOIR almost entirely ended accommodations for other employees to work remotely at the start of the second Trump administration.

According to a New York Focus review of hiring announcements, the administration has hired more than 300 new permanent immigration judges. Current listings show open positions paying up to $209,000 a year. It has fired more than 125, according to the National Association of Immigration Judges, and more than 100 have left voluntarily.

Of the 37 judges assigned to Federal Plaza in January 2025, only 16 remain, and the Trump administration has appointed 26 new judges there.

The new judges generally have far less experience with immigration law than judges hired earlier, who typically had backgrounds working for the Department of Homeland Security or as attorneys representing immigrants, according to the judges’ official biographies. Appearing remotely, hundreds of miles away from their colleagues, means it’s harder for the new judges to ask questions and learn on the job, said National Association of Immigration Judges President Holly D’Andrea.

“A lot of times it takes you six months to a year, maybe two years even, before you have the experience level to really function on your own,” D’Andrea said.

Mattingly said the agency requires that new judges receive “extensive classroom-based training and on-the-job training,” and all judges attend annual trainings.

Still, courtwatchers say remote judges are at an inherent disadvantage when it comes to navigating complicated cases. Jun Reiss, the assistant detention coordinator at St. Peter’s Church, who frequently watches immigration court, recalled a recent situation in which an elderly Bangladeshi woman who showed up with no attorney asked the judge to review the folder full of documents she had brought with her to shed light on her case. But the judge, who was appearing remotely, had no way to do so

“It was the prime example of why it’s such a bad thing,” Reiss said of judges working remotely. “They were getting so frustrated with each other, and it was all because they weren’t in the same room.”

Devon Thurman, a political scientist at Georgia Tech and a researcher with the Deportation Data Project who studies video appearances in immigration court, has analyzed EOIR data and found that respondents who appear via video are significantly likelier to be ordered deported than those who appear in person. While watching such appearances, she observed what she terms “judicial frustration,” situations in which an audio or video lag or disrupted connection caused the judge to become irritated with the respondent or their attorney.

“On its best day, it’s still meaningfully different than appearing in court,” she said of the technology.

Thurman analyzed recent EOIR data at the request of New York Focus and found that the share of respondents appearing remotely at 26 Federal Plaza has fallen in the last two years, even as fully remote judges have taken the bench. The analysis showed that nearly 90 percent of respondents in front of Samuels appeared in person.

Several immigration attorneys told New York Focus it didn’t make much difference to them if a judge appeared remotely.

“I don’t think it matters that much, because sometimes we appear virtually,” said Caroline Stephenson, an attorney who had a client on Samuels’s docket in September. “It’s more efficient. I get to represent people from all over the country.”

At the same time, Stephenson said, a judge sitting in their home office, hundreds of miles away from their courtroom, might be less able to appreciate the gravity of their decisions.

“When you can see people in front of you, it may give you a different perspective,” she said. “You realize this is not a number, but people with lives, challenges, families, struggles — the same that we all have.”

Lobbying firms are no strangers to super PACs — which can spend unlimited cash to support candidates as long as it’s independent of campaigns. But they generally help set up such committees to benefit a single client or affect a specific election. 

Brown & Weinraub’s is different: It’s a super PAC for the lobbying firm itself, with no clear expiration date, catering to clients with a broad array of interests. 

This could prove to be a “powerful tool for lobbyists to get their clients what they want now, while also permanently expanding the lobbyists’ influence,” said Kyle Kennedy, legislative program manager at the government reform group Reinvent Albany.

Two of those clients — Kalshi, the prediction market platform, and the Chinese American Independent Practice Association, a doctors’ group — have largely funded the super PAC thus far, which in turn supported politicians with key legislative influence over their priorities. 

CAIPA’s political arm has given the super PAC $147,500 and Kalshi recently gave $400,000 in advance of the November election. Both are clients of Evan Rantzaklis, a Brown & Weinraub lobbyist who is listed as the senior adviser for the new super PAC.

Since the US Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision — which unleashed campaign spending through super PACs — both local and national interest groups have spent major sums on state elections. 

Interest groups with sufficient resources and political acumen have started super PACs of their own. But Brown & Weinraub’s model “dramatically lowers the barrier for their clients to dump money into a political system already drowning in big money influence,” Kennedy told New York Focus. Super PACs run by lobbyists allow them “to use other people’s money to help friendly incumbents win, while creating an implicit threat to legislators that might oppose them.” 

Brown & Weinraub raked in more than $24 million in compensation from hundreds of clients last year, by far the most of any lobbying firm in the state.

The five state legislators who benefited from New York Forward’s spending in the June Democratic primaries all won their races. (Several did not face especially serious electoral challenges.) In a post-primary email soliciting donations for New York Forward, Brown & Weinraub said the five victories showed the super PAC “gives our clients a proven, results-driven platform to engage in New York’s political process.”

The firm plans to spend in the November general elections, and while its targeted races are not yet clear, it stated in paperwork earlier this year that it planned to spend in support of Hochul.

Kalshi first donated $50,000 to the super PAC in late May. (The donation was required under election law to be disclosed at the time, but New York Forward only reported it two months later in an amended filing.) Kalshi did not respond to an email seeking comment. 

That was the second-largest donation to the super PAC during the primary season, according to disclosure filings, and soon afterwards, New York Forward’s second-largest expenditure, $22,000, went to boost Queens Senator Joseph Addabbo. Addabbo did not face an especially competitive reelection bid, but he is a lawmaker with major influence over Kalshi’s business interests in New York.

Prior to Kalshi’s donation, Addabbo, chair of Senate Racing, Gaming, and Wagering Committee, had successfully pushed for the legalization and regulation of a different type of betting platform: mobile sports betting companies like DraftKings and FanDuel. More recently, he has expressed concern about online prediction markets like Kalshi. “They’re in illegal territory, because we have regulated, for instance, mobile sports betting,” Addabbo told Spectrum News in the spring. “So, let’s regulate prediction markets.”

In March, Addabbo sponsored a bill that would give the state attorney general authority to issue rules and regulations for online prediction markets. Records show that in May or June, Kalshi lobbied Addabbo on the bill. 

Addabbo did not return requests for comment.

The company’s recent $400,000 donation to the super PAC comes at a time when the company is under threat in New York: In July, Governor Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit accusing Kalshi of running an illegal gambling operation. It’s not yet clear how the money will be spent.

Previously, the biggest donor to the super PAC had been the Chinese American Independent Practice Association, which represents over 1,800 private practice medical providers who serve the New York City area’s Asian-American community. 

In March, after the state senator representing Chinatown announced his retirement, creating an open seat, CAIPA’s political action committee donated $147,500 to the Brown & Weinraub super PAC. A significant portion of the super PAC’s spending — $107,000 — went toward promoting Manhattan Democratic Assemblymember Grace Lee for the open seat in her primary against former Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou. Lee won handily. 

CAIPA already had warm feelings toward Lee. In June 2024, Lee introduced a bill that could enable its members to buy cheaper health insurance for their employees. In the years since, Brown & Weinraub lobbied Lee’s staff several times on the bill, which passed both houses of the legislature this year and awaits Governor Kathy Hochul’s signature or veto. It is opposed by some health insurance companies, such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which has argued it could result in “reduced health insurance protections for New York residents.”

Lee’s campaign noted that her support for the bill began long before Brown & Weinraub lobbied her or her Senate candidacy materialized. A spokesperson said she was encouraged by the Senate sponsor to introduce a companion bill in the Assembly.

Lee introduced the bill to “protect quality healthcare access for the most vulnerable low-income immigrant patients in New York,” said her chief of staff, Alex Fraser, noting that federal Medicaid cuts have threatened physicians’ ability to operate in the state. “Grace has been an early and vocal leader in the fight to protect immigrant communities, and she’ll carry that work into the Senate next year.”

While Rantzaklis did not respond to questions, he wrote an op-ed last December framing the super PAC’s efforts as a response to a political culture prone to punishing “attempts at collaboration.”

“We will support effective state legislators who take their responsibilities seriously and have a demonstrated record of delivering for their districts, no matter where they land politically,” he wrote. “Our purpose is to ensure that the people doing the real work of governing are not drowned out by the most strident voices or by challengers focused only on making a splash.”

These are among the personal items unsheltered New Yorkers say the city has discarded against their wishes this year during homeless encampment sweeps, or “cleanups,” as the city calls the practice of dispatching teams to dismantle encampments in public spaces. 

After promising in December to end encampment sweeps, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did an about-face in February. His administration reinstated sweeps in response to an unusually cold winter during which at least 29 people died, prompting questions from the City Council about whether the deaths could have been prevented by more aggressive outreach to unsheltered people.

The Department of Homeless Services has conducted far fewer sweeps under Mamdani than under his predecessor, Eric Adams, and the administration has worked to differentiate its approach. “I personally don’t think of these as cleanings or sweeps or moves, but as focused housing efforts,” Erin Dalton, commissioner of the Department of Social Services, told the City Council in March. 

Among other reforms to the process, the city pledged “relentless outreach” to encampment residents for seven consecutive days prior to a sweep. Mamdani also placed the Department of Homeless Services, rather than the NYPD, in charge of sweeps. In Fiscal Year 2026, the city referred over 13,032 unsheltered people into permanent or transitional housing, a 20% increase from 2025, according to data from DHS. 

Dalton has also said the city will protect the belongings of those living in encampments. 

Under a federal court order, the city is required to offer unhoused people the opportunity to store or “voucher” their belongings and expand the list of property eligible for storage, adding items like hygiene products and bedding. 

But a dozen interviews with witnesses to recent sweeps suggest that the problem of lost belongings persists, often defying Mamdani’s policies and the court order.

New York Focus spoke with 13 people who experienced or witnessed at least 14 encampment sweeps since the start of the year. In six of those 14 sweeps, people said city employees discarded belongings without giving them adequate time to gather them or offering storage.

City records obtained through a public records request show that, between January 1 and July 14 of this year, DHS stored encampment residents’ belongings only 15 times, despite conducting more than 175 sweeps between January and May. The department said in July that only a single person had retrieved their stored belongings from DHS this year, raising questions about the effectiveness of the system.

The city hasn’t updated its internal directives to reflect the requirements of the court order, other records show. 

In a statement, the Department of Social Services, which oversees the Department of Homeless Services, defended its approach. In every instance raised by New York Focus, “staff followed protocols,” the agency wrote. “During encampment operations, DHS is conducting consistent outreach, offering placements, and vouchering items as required.” The Mayor’s Office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Proponents argue that sweeps keep city streets clean and safe and help to bring unsheltered people inside.

“There’s a sanitary issue. There’s a safety issue. No matter how sanitary they are, they eat there, and then the garbage does accumulate,” said City Councilmember Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

But for unhoused New Yorkers, the decision to come inside isn’t always easy. Many have had negative experiences that led them to distrust shelters. William Galarza, who experienced a sweep in downtown Manhattan in late March, described growing up in a group home where he experienced an assault as a teenager, after which he decided to avoid congregate housing. The city’s shelter system has long suffered from violence, theft, staff misconduct, and other issues.

Galarza said he requested a single transitional housing room from the city, but has yet to receive one. “I just want my own place,” he said.

The federal order was put in place after the Urban Justice Center, a public-interest group, sued the city during the Adams administration for allegedly violating unhoused people’s civil rights by arbitrarily forcing them to move from encampments and throwing away their property. 

The order reaffirms aspects of existing policy, including that the city must store property even when its owner is not present, as long as the owner is identifiable. The city also must give people 90 days to reclaim their property after it is vouchered for storage. 

But it also clarifies and expands existing policy: Residents must be given a “reasonable opportunity” to collect their belongings before encampments are cleared, and may not be restricted from gathering, organizing, or removing their items. No property eligible for storage can be discarded unless its owners explicitly state the items are not wanted. While items such as medication, government documents, and IDs were eligible for storage under existing policy, the order expands the list to include small appliances, liquid hygiene products, bedding, clothing, and personal effects. 

But the city has not updated its formal policies to reflect these new legal obligations, according to a review of internal documents by New York Focus. The current Homeless Services directive guiding how city employees conduct sweeps and what is eligible for storage, obtained from the Department of Social Services, is dated June 2024, 15 months before the court order went into effect, and diverges substantially from the requirements of the court order. For example, the document wrongly states that liquid hygiene products, furniture, and small appliances are ineligible for storage. 

The Department of Social Services did not respond to questions about why the court order’s requirements are not fully reflected in Homeless Services’ internal directives or why the policy is not publicly available on government websites.

Sitting in a lower Manhattan park in early April, Galarza recounted a sweep in late March, when the city confiscated two bags of clothing and food he was transporting for a friend.

A mutual aid organizer who assisted him said he provided the property owner’s name to city employees, but they refused to voucher the items.

A photo and video obtained by New York Focus also shows Department of Sanitation workers discarding belongings consistent with the bags of clothing and food alleged to have been thrown out. While food is not eligible for storage, clothing is. The organizer also provided a text message sent later that week describing the incident.

An internal report the Department of Social Services shared with New York Focus states that those experiencing this sweep were allowed to keep their belongings and left behind trash, food, a blanket, and a basket. All clients were “offered vouchering services several times and all three clients verbally refused services at this time,” it states.

Sara Rankin, a professor at Seattle University School of Law who has studied encampment sweeps, said it’s not unusual for a city’s records to diverge from what unhoused people report. “The city says they do one thing, but affected people on the ground are reporting otherwise,” she said.

In an April sweep in Hudson Yards, Liam James said the city discarded a computer, along with a friend’s paperwork and bedding. 

“Anything that I was keeping, they were just throwing it away unless I had it in my arm, holding it,” James said. “When it comes to the basic things, like blankets, bedding, . . . any padding between the cement and you — they took that.” Blankets and bedding are both included in the expanded list of property eligible for vouchering under the court order.

In response to questions about this incident from New York Focus, the Department of Social Services wrote that people present at the sweep were given an opportunity to take their belongings and were offered and declined vouchering. An internal report on the sweep did not record the presence of a computer or say that one was discarded. Among the items thrown away, according to the report, were furniture, tarps, clothing, bedding, tents, and suitcases. 

Cullom Stanley, 50, has lived on the sidewalk in front of a shuttered medical spa on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on and off for the past two years. he sleeps in a blue camping tent, storing their possessions under a large brown umbrella nearby.  

During an encampment sweep on March 11, Stanley said he and his partner dragged their sleeping rolls, suitcases, and tent around the corner. When they returned a few minutes later to where they had slept, Stanley said he saw city employees had begun throwing away their clothes. 

This conduct appears to run counter to the requirement that encampment residents have a “reasonable opportunity” to gather their belongings. 

The pair asked to retrieve the items, Stanley said, but it was too late. His partner’s belongings — including her pocketbook, which contained her ID and birth certificate, as well as her heart medication and a nebulizer device she used to treat a respiratory condition — were already in the garbage truck. (New York Focus could not speak to Stanley’s partner directly, so her name has been omitted.) Stanley said they were later told they should have had the items vouchered, but couldn’t recall vouchering being offered before the items were discarded.

The Department of Social Services’s report describes the incident differently, noting that “the clients were not hostile and retrieved some of their belongings and allowed DSNY to begin cleaning.” Sheets, pillows, clothing, shoes, towels, suitcases, and coats were discarded, the report states. Medication and identification documents are not mentioned. 

While notices posted before sweeps describe vouchering as an option, Ethan Schneider, who lives on the same block as Stanley, said he’s found it difficult to voucher his belongings.

“I had to ask like four or five different outreach people, and it took me like four or five days before they finally were like, ‘yeah, we’ll do it,’” he said.

Credit cards, IDs, social security cards, clothing, and wallets are some of the items vouchered by the city this year, public records obtained by New York Focus show. The records do not indicate which items belonged to the single person who retrieved their belongings from city storage between January and July, or how many different individuals have vouchered belongings.

“It is not completely surprising that only one homeless New Yorker has retrieved belongings from storage,” said Marika Dias, an attorney and the managing director of the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project, the group leading the lawsuit that led to the court order. “When people are struggling to survive in the street, usually it’s not possible to collect items from storage.” 

For Stanley, losing belongings during sweeps has added to the challenges of seeking permanent housing. For two weeks after the March sweep, Stanley’s partner went without medication, he said, forcing them to navigate complexities with her doctor to renew her prescription. Because Stanley lost his own ID in a sweep, he said, neither he nor his partner have any form of government-issued identification. In later sweeps in April and May of this year, Stanley said he has lost his tent, his shoes, and a sign explaining his family’s situation. 

Stanley has since fashioned a new sign, visible on a May afternoon. “We are trying to get our ID,” it reads, “so that we can get back to work and out of this very humbling situation.”

Mamdani on Monday will announce a task force charged with proposing reforms to the city’s civil service system, according to an announcement shared exclusively with New York Focus. The 12-person group of city officials and labor leaders will study the system and then recommend legislative changes in Albany, since the state governs the city’s system.

While past attempts to revamp the system have sputtered in the face of opposition from labor unions, a number of top unions have signed onto Mamdani’s effort. Their involvement could limit the scope of reforms the panel will consider, but also makes the push more politically viable.

Created in 1883 with the goal of awarding government jobs based on merit instead of patronage, the civil service system has come under increasing criticism for convoluted rules that deter top talent and contribute to the city’s vacancy crisis. For the 80 percent of city jobs that require an exam, applicants must sift through job titles with confusing names that bear little resemblance to their real responsibilities, often wait years for a relevant agency to schedule an exam, then wait months more for the city to release lists of people who scored well enough to qualify for jobs. The process often takes 15 months from exam to hire.

“Talent is going to go where they have the offer, and if we can’t offer people jobs quickly, then people move on with their life,” said Yume Kitasei, commissioner of the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, in an interview.

Kitasei, whose agency runs the civil service system, will chair the so-called Civil Service Modernization Advisory Committee. The vice chair will be Henry Garrido, executive director of DC37, the biggest union of city workers. The panel will make its initial recommendations in December 2026 with the hope of getting them passed in next year’s state legislative session, then release another set of proposals in December 2027.

Kitasei did not detail particular reforms that might be considered. But the group’s primary goals include helping the city hire qualified talent more quickly, creating clear pathways into city service and for career advancement, and modernizing tech systems that can be decades out of date, officials said.

Municipal unions have defended the current system as a tool for protecting merit-based hiring. New York Focus reported that DC37 and other unions quietly killed a 2024 plan by former Mayor Eric Adams to opt into a state program that waived exams for hundreds of jobs; Mamdani has declined to revisit that program.

The most significant recent effort came in 2011, when Michael Bloomberg pushed to significantly shrink the number of titles that require exams. That proposal died due to opposition from unions.

But Garrido told New York Focus he is open to changes, especially ones that would shorten the time applicants wait to receive offers and modernize job descriptions. He pointed to recent city job postings that require experience with “video display terminals,” an outdated term for computer monitors that has not been widely used for decades.

Have a tip about government hiring? We want to hear from you. Reach out at nick@nysfocus.com.

“You can have a system that promotes and protects merit and fitness, but at the same time [is] competitive, if you remove some of the bureaucratic things,” Garrido said.

Mamdani has reason to care about the civil service system. Nearly 75,000 people applied for roles in his administration after his election, and his ambitious agenda could hinge on a well-staffed workforce. Short-staffing is already impeding his work: agencies including the Health Department, Police Department and Finance Department all described challenges due to staff vacancies in the latest annual Mayor’s Management Report released last month.

Outside experts who have long urged reform were cautiously optimistic about Mamdani’s effort. Robert Gordon, executive vice president at the Recoding America Fund, a nonprofit focused on government capability, said he hopes the group tackles the outdated exam questions that often fail to capture relevant skills, the slow test-scoring system, and rules that allow only internal candidates to qualify for promotions.

“It’s truly wonderful the mayor and DCAS commissioner and head of DC37 are committed to these challenges and building a better system,” Gordon said. “It’s a great credit to the mayor that he says this matters.”

Andrew Rein, president of the Citizens Budget Commission, a think tank, said the panel should try to broaden job titles and reconsider the so-called “one in three” rule, which requires city agencies to first consider hiring one of the three highest-ranked candidates before moving slowly down a ranked list of test-takers.

The rest of the task force includes six top city officials and four union leaders. On the city’s side are Office of Management and Budget Director Sherif Soliman, Corporation Counsel Steve Banks, Deputy Mayor for Operations Julia Kerson, Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem, Department of Social Services Commissioner Erin Dalton and Office of Labor Relations Commissioner Renee Campion. The labor leaders are Gloria Middleton, president of CWA Local 1180; Joseph Colangelo, president of SEIU Local 246; Anthony Wells, head of SSEU Local 371; and Benny Boscio, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.

The Mamdani administration will do a listening tour with rank-and-file city workers and speak to job-seekers to include their perspectives, Kitasei said. Besides the legislative changes, the panel will also consider administrative changes the city could implement itself, including different testing approaches and better communication with applicants.

Fixing civil service won’t solve all of the city’s staffing issues. Kitasei noted that hiring has also been hampered by fiscal constraints, including a two-for-one policy imposed by Adams in 2024 that only allowed agencies to hire a new worker after two departed. (Mamdani lifted the policy in February.)

Kitasei said she is optimistic that the administration will find common ground with unions, whom she described as equally invested in a real overhaul. But she acknowledged that change won’t be easy.

“Everything’s on the table, but obviously there are political realities around this effort,” Kitasei said. “So it’ll also depend on what other people’s red lines are.”

In May, National Grid filed an unusual proposal with the state’s utility regulator, the Public Service Commission, promising to “freeze” gas rates for its nearly 2 million New York City and Long Island customers. Advocates, analysts, and officials have since blasted it, with some calling it a rate hike “in disguise.” They argue that the proposal will ultimately allow National Grid to collect more money from customers while avoiding scrutiny. 

Regulators are expected to make a decision on the plan in the coming months. So what does the fine print say, and how could it show up on customers’ bills?

What Is National Grid Proposing?

This spring, National Grid was expected to file a “rate case” seeking state approval to increase what it charges its downstate customers for delivering their gas. Normally, utilities seek such rate hikes every few years.

Instead, in late May, it announced a plan to “freeze” gas rates at their current levels until spring 2028. The company’s New York president, Sally Librera, said in a press release that the plan would provide “meaningful financial relief” to customers struggling with the rising cost of living “while ensuring our dedicated employees continue to deliver the safe, reliable energy that heats homes and powers businesses.”

Both Governor Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cheered the proposal. 

“I’m pleased to announce National Grid and the Department of Public Service found a way to hold the line on rate hikes for nearly 2 million gas customers,” the governor wrote on X at the time, referring to the state agency in charge of utilities. 

Mamdani called the proposal “an important step toward delivering much-needed relief to the many New Yorkers who open their gas bills with dread.” 

Because National Grid said it was not raising rates, it did not file the proposal as a traditional rate case, which would have opened a court-like process before the Public Service Commission. The proceedings typically last more than a year and involve thousands of pages of documents and public comments, multiple rounds of hearings, and a discovery process allowing parties to interrogate the utility, regulators, and other parties in writing. 

Rather, it opened what could be a much shorter proceeding involving a few months’ worth of written public comments and much less required documentation. So far, there has been no hearing. Comments closed last week, and regulators are now weighing how to respond. 

Why Are People Skeptical?

Critics point out three main ways the proposal could end up costing customers:

First, it would introduce a series of accounting changes that critics say would be favorable to the company. For one: Customers are currently paying a premium to make up for extra costs from 2024–25 that the company had agreed to spread out evenly over three years. Unless regulators approve new rates, that amount would disappear from customers’ bills next spring, saving New York City customers more than $150 a year and Long Island customers about $130, according to an estimate from the Public Utility Law Project, a consumer advocacy group. 

Now, National Grid is proposing to maintain the premium for an extra year. 

National Grid is also proposing to slightly increase spending on gas infrastructure, for a total of more than $1.7 billion. That includes some $700 million between New York City and Long Island to replace pipes.

The utility’s own filings indicate that it intends to bill customers for its spending in the future. A proposed surcharge would add more than $50 to the average heating customer’s annual bill after the “freeze” expires, according to National Grid data reviewed by the firm Synapse Energy Economics. That would be on top of any other hikes approved in a future rate case.

“Basically, they’re taking out credit on behalf of the rate payers and calling it a rate freeze. That’s not what it is,” said Kristen McManus, government affairs director at AARP New York, which opposes National Grid’s proposal. 

Finally, the utility is proposing to roll back standards for fixing and preventing leaks in its gas pipes. While climate groups have long called pipe replacement programs a waste of money, they say the company should not be allowed to change standards unilaterally and potentially dodge penalties for failing to address leaks. 

National Grid has said the proposal was crafted to “fairly balance the need to promote customer affordability, fund critical infrastructure investment, and preserve a stable investment climate.” 

But, having now had a few months to pore over the proposal, nearly everyone who has weighed in — including Mamdani’s climate office — is opposed. 

“The more I dug into the filing, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe they’re doing this,’” said Jamie Van Nostrand, policy director at the national nonprofit Future of Heat Initiative. A longtime former utility lawyer and regulator, Van Nostrand called National Grid’s plan a “scam” in a scathing July blog post. 

“It just takes advantage of all this concern about energy affordability, and [they’re] pretending, ‘Oh, we’re going to do our part,’” he told New York Focus. “The ratepayers are still bearing all the pain.” 

The NYC Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice wrote in a filing last week that the company’s plan “will harm ratepayers and elevate utility costs over the medium and long term,” leaving “few controls on National Grid to keep costs low.” (Mayoral spokesperson Jeremy Edwards declined to comment further when reached by New York Focus.)

The state’s Utility Intervention Unit, a branch of the New York Department of State that represents customers in utility proceedings, warned that National Grid is quietly seeking revenue increases that, by law, may require the full scrutiny of a rate case. 

Jessica Azulay, executive director of the advocacy group Alliance for a Green Economy, said, “We would love to see a rate freeze and real relief for customers. … Unfortunately, what National Grid is proposing is not that.”

Does the Public Have a Say?

Critics say that the way National Grid put forward its plan, by going outside of the typical rate case process, limits transparency and public participation. Some, including Mamdani’s office, worry it could set a precedent that could undermine future rate cases. 

There are signs that Hochul’s Department of Public Service privately negotiated the proposal in advance with National Grid, aiming to secure a speedy approval by the Public Service Commission. (The seven-member commission votes independently, but its chair is a member of Hochul’s administration and all members consult closely with agency staff.) In an initial statement on the proposal, Hochul herself said that National Grid worked with the agency to craft it. 

In a statement to New York Focus, a Department of Public Service spokesperson noted that it’s common for utilities to meet with agency staff before filing a proposal. “In this instance, as with other utilities, the Department engaged with National Grid to consider options to stabilize rates, including options that could defer the need to file a rate case,” the spokesperson wrote.

National Grid spokesperson Wendy Frigeria did not comment on specific negotiations but said the company “regularly engages in constructive dialogue with Department of Public Service Staff and other parties” to “ensure a thorough understanding of our proposals and the benefits they would deliver to customers.” 

The governor’s office declined to comment further on National Grid’s plan, instead highlighting other measures Hochul has taken to advance affordability, including rebate checks, utility reforms passed in this year’s budget, and an “aggressive push” to enroll New Yorkers in energy affordability programs.

“Governor Hochul has consistently urged the PSC to do everything in its power to prevent rate increases, now and in the future,” said spokesperson Ken Lovett. 

How is National Grid Responding? 

National Grid is standing by its proposal. 

“We are confident in the merits of our rate stabilization proposal and welcome the Public Service Commission’s independent and comprehensive review,” Frigeria said. The company declined to respond in more detail to recent comments filed, referring New York Focus back to its initial press release about the plan.

The Department of Public Service provided a longer defense of the proposal, saying it would only allow National Grid to charge customers for a narrow list of costs — mainly infrastructure spending and taxes — while leaving the company to absorb several other expenses. This should incentivize the company to control those costs in a way that could ultimately help lower rates, the agency spokesperson said. 

The spokesperson added that the deadline for public comments was extended this summer, and stressed that the proposal would still be subject to a rigorous review before a final commission vote.

What’s Next?

Regulators will continue to review filings in the coming weeks. There is no deadline for the Public Service Commission to vote on the proposal, but it could do so at one of its monthly sessions this fall.

When the commission does vote, it could approve or deny the proposal outright, or seek to modify it. It could also convert the proceeding into a larger rate case, which some parties have called for. 

National Grid, meanwhile, has said that if regulators don’t approve the petition as written, they will have little choice but to scrap it and file for rate hikes “​​as quickly as possible, seeking significant delivery rate increases.”

Blakeman, currently the Nassau County executive, is seeking to unseat New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who has led the state since 2021. Hochul is the heavy favorite, but some polling shows Blakeman within striking distance. 

Blakeman is relying on New York’s matching funds program to boost his campaign. The taxpayer-funded program, which was championed by good government groups and launched in 2022, allows candidates to get $6 in public money for every $1 of eligible contributions from supporters. It was meant to give underdog candidates a better chance of competing against richer campaigns. Hochul’s campaign opted out of the program.

To be eligible for matching funds, contributions must come from New Yorkers who have not donated more than $1,050 to the candidate, and must be at least $5. Only the first $250 from each donor is eligible.

Have a tip about New York elections?
Reach out at sam@nysfocus.com.

But thousands of donations that the Blakeman campaign marked as eligible, worth over $860,000 in public funds if approved, violated those rules.

All requests for matching funds are ultimately approved or rejected by the public campaign finance board. A spokesperson for the board said that it checks all claims for matching funds to ensure they are eligible, but did not answer questions about Blakeman’s contributions.

Blakeman campaign spokesperson Madison Spanodemos said the errors have been corrected, and that the campaign filed amended reports “to accurately reflect the millions in matchable contributions from New Yorkers.”

That doesn’t appear to be true. Blakeman’s campaign has amended many of his finance reports several times, but the most recent versions still include match requests for thousands of ineligible donations. The campaign did not respond to multiple requests for clarification.

Spanodemos blamed the errors on the governor. “Kathy Hochul’s illegal attempt to block Bruce Blakeman from receiving public matching funds created reporting complications,” she said.

In March, the public campaign finance board voted 4-3 to deny Blakeman’s campaign matching funds, due to his running mate failing to submit the proper paperwork. Blakeman sued to overturn the decision and blamed it on Hochul, who appointed several of the board’s members. In May, a court ruled in Blakeman’s favor, allowing him to start receiving public money.

The campaign requested matching funds for over 1,900 contributions from donors outside New York, including more than 400 from Florida and Texas, a $9,000 contribution from cryptocurrency mogul Brock Pierce, who listed a Puerto Rico address, and nearly 200 contributions of $1 from states including Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. Blakeman’s campaign filings wrongly stated that these donations were from “in-district” donors.

Blakeman’s fundraising website lists some of the rules of the matching funds program, but does not include the rule that only donations from New Yorkers’ donations are eligible for matching funds.

The website notes that only donors who have given less than $1,050 are eligible for matches, but the campaign still requested matching funds for over 500 donations by New Yorkers who gave more than that amount. Those requests included a $5,205 gift from former Republican Representative Nan Hayworth and over $9,000 from Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director under President Donald Trump. 

“The Blakeman campaign needs to get their act together,” said Alex Camarda, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan good government group Reinvent Albany. “These are basic things that any campaign should understand.”

Kathleen McGrath, the elections board spokesperson, noted that bipartisan staff audit all claims before sending money to campaigns. “If matching funds are paid out for claims that are later deemed to be ineligible, the [board] has several ways to recover those funds,” she noted.

The ineligible donations made up about 10 percent of the contributions the campaign submitted for matching funds. Blakeman’s campaign has received nearly $2 million in public matching funds, according to his campaign’s July report, but it’s not clear whether any of the ineligible donations were matched as part of that haul.

Today, he’s in his 60s and has stage four cancer, but is still fighting his conviction from inside a maximum security prison in Wallkill, NY.

Eleby is one of over 50 people who wrote to New York Focus and Columbia Journalism Investigations with their claims of innocence in the past couple of years, as part of an investigation into wrongful conviction reviews across the state. Some said they have waited over a decade to have their cases re-investigated by local or statewide conviction integrity units, departments housed within district attorneys’ offices that are tasked with evaluating wrongful conviction claims. 

“It’s becoming quite obvious to me … that I will never receive a just and fair re-investigation,” one incarcerated individual wrote in a letter. “I’m left to pray for a miracle,” said another.

Most of the people who wrote to New York Focus and CJI, including Eleby, had legally represented themselves in the process of applying for conviction reviews. Eleby gathered the records from his case, but could not get hold of a transcript the court had lost and some documents the DA’s office denied him access to, he said. He submitted his application to the Brooklyn CIU in 2013. Ten years later, he received a one-page letter stating that his case was closed.

“No one has embraced my plea for justice,” Eleby wrote in his 2024 letter to New York Focus and CJI. 

A spokesperson for the Brooklyn DA’s office said that they had not found “a shred of evidence” of Eleby’s innocence and that the Brooklyn CIU didn’t exist in 2013, even though reporting showed .that the Brooklyn CIU was formed in 2011, and its  first exoneration occurred in 2013.

This video brings Eleby’s letters and story to life, with the help of Greg Mingo, who served over 40 years in New York’s prison system himself before receiving clemency.

But in late August, 15 sheriffs — only a third of whom participated in those programs — sued over the law, arguing that it could have far broader consequences. Their lawsuit claims that the law could upend “routine informal practices, formal written agreements, and federal funding streams that both supported and depended upon local-federal cooperation” on immigration enforcement. 

The sheriffs point to language in the legislation that prohibits certain “formal or informal” agreements between New York police and ICE. While 287(g) and detention agreements are clearly “formal,” the law doesn’t define an “informal agreement.”

The sheriffs’ attorney, Mateo Forero, is the director of investigations at the restrictionist organization Federation for American Immigration Reform. He told New York Focus they  are concerned that the new Office of Immigrant Trust inside the Attorney General’s Office could interpret its mandate expansively to investigate agencies that have never held formal agreements with ICE.

“They’ve basically become the policemen of the sheriffs,” he said of the Office of Immigrant Trust.

Some attorneys who advocate for immigrants’ rights in New York hope he is right. They told New York Focus that the law’s failure to define an informal agreement could be an opportunity. 

“Once we saw this language, we knew immediately that the lack of definition just meant that we had to be extremely proactive and affirmative about articulating all the ways that informal collusion happens,” said Yasmine Farhang, executive director of the Immigrant Defense Project. 

Farhang’s organization has prepared advice for attorneys on what kind of informal agreement could be reported to the attorney general. 

“Anything that feels regularized, in our mind, should be investigated under this law,” Farhang said. 

New York Focus has reported on sheriffs calling Border Patrol for translation services, which then led to arrests, as well as municipalities detaining immigrants after traffic stops and then holding them for ICE. 

During this year’s legislative session, legal aid and advocacy organizations pushed for much more sweeping restrictions on collaboration between ICE and local police through a bill called New York For All. It would have prohibited police from sharing any information with ICE for the purposes of civil immigration enforcement. Though it had broad support in the legislature, Governor Kathy Hochul refused to back it, arguing that it could hamper collaboration on criminal investigations, too. 

It wasn’t until the end of the session that the text of the compromise legislation became public, and the detailed discussion of what it prohibits has emerged only recently as localities implement the law and the Office of Immigrant Trust staffs up. All but one New York county that had a 287(g) agreement with ICE has now ended it and the counties detaining immigrants must stop doing so by late November. 

Legal experts told New York Focus the new law is confusing because it refers specifically to formal or informal agreements that fall under the federal law that governs the 287(g) program. But there’s no mention of “informal agreements” within that federal law.

“There’s either a formal agreement or there’s no agreement,” said Lauren DesRosiers, an assistant professor at Albany Law School and director of the school’s Immigration Law Clinic. “I just don’t know what this really means.”

Ultimately, attorneys on all sides of the issue said, courts will likely define “informal agreement” through litigation, perhaps if the attorney general sues a law enforcement agency over some aspect of their interactions with ICE. 

The sheriffs’ lawsuit and supporting declarations detail the many ways local law enforcement interact with federal agencies on immigration-related matters. 

The sheriffs describe receiving funds from the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, through which the Department of Justice reimburses local and state governments for incarcerating undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, and through Operation Stonegarden, which pays local law enforcement to work with Border Patrol. They argue that the federal government could withhold that money if New York law enforcement has to stop cooperating with ICE, leaving a revenue gap local taxpayers would have to fill.  

Sharing information with federal agencies is a key part of their work, the sheriffs explain. Patrick Engle, the sheriff of St. Lawrence County, said that his border county agency regularly deals with trespass complaints and immigrants passing through rural property.

“I do not claim that every person who crosses the river is a violent criminal,” Engle wrote in his declaration. “I do claim that a border county cannot do its job if it is forbidden from using the federal tools that exist for the people who are already in our custody.”

In response to the sheriffs’ lawsuit, the New York attorney general’s office has argued that restricting 287(g) agreements is well within the rights of state policymakers; the federal law establishing the program stipulates that any agreement must be consistent with state law. The office also pointed out that a federal judge already rejected the Trump administration’s challenge to the law on similar grounds. 

That judge, Mae D’Agostino in the Northern District of New York, is also reviewing the sheriffs’ lawsuit. It’s unclear when she might rule on their motion to halt the new law. 

In the meantime, the attorney general’s office has moved assertively to enforce it. The interim leader of the Office of Immigrant Trust, Zoe Levine, previously worked as legal director of the immigration practice at the Bronx Defenders, one of the legal aid organizations that advocated for New York For All. 

In announcing the office, Attorney General Letitia James also called on New York residents to report violations of law. 

The AG’s office already sued the Rensselaer County Sheriff’s Office for refusing  to comply with its order to end 287(g) agreements. Rensselaer Sheriff Kyle Bourgault, who is also a plaintiff in the suit, told New York Focus that the agreement had enabled his county to smoothly transfer people with criminal history to ICE custody, and that he believes New York’s new law is unconstitutional.

“I think it was an intimidation thing, to try to get me to cave,” he said of the AG’s lawsuit, which was filed two days after he and the other sheriffs sued.  

Several of the agencies that had 287(g) agreements or housed detainees for ICE did not join the lawsuit. 

One of those is Montgomery County, where the jail brought in close to $200,000 by detaining people on civil immigration charges for ICE in the last two years, records obtained by New York Focus show. 

Sheriff Jeffery Smith said his decision to stay out of the lawsuit has drawn questions from constituents who “wanted to make sure that we were doing everything we can to make sure they’re not living amongst us,” referring to undocumented immigrants. Smith told New York Focus that he supported his fellow sheriffs who chose to sue, but didn’t think that route was the right choice for his county.

“It’s difficult to pick and choose which laws you’re going to enforce as a sheriff,” he said. “I’m a firm believer that we don’t make the laws, we enforce them. But I also don’t support a lot of the way this has taken place, so I applaud them for having the courage to address that.”

But Co-ops and Condos United has deeper ties to the real estate industry than its grassroots branding suggests. The group is a rebranding of Homeowners for a Stronger New York, a prominent critic of Local Law 97. Until its renaming last fall, Homeowners for a Stronger New York received all its funding (over $750,000) from a lobbying group run by the Real Estate Board of New York, or REBNY, which represents some of the city’s largest developers.

The group changed its name last November. Its former president, Geoffrey Mazel, remains a leader in the rebranded organization, telling New York Focus he serves as CCU’s co-founder, executive member, and legal advisor.

In a phone interview, Mazel said that CCU receives funding from REBNY but also has “a lot of support in the co-op community.” He said he’s not at liberty to share the amount of funding REBNY provides, but that he has been organizing middle- and working-class co-op owners since long before he’d heard of the real estate board.

“Nobody tells me what to do,” Mazel said. “I’ve been an independent advocate for co-op boards in the city for 42 years. REBNY, I don’t give a shit what REBNY says about anything.”

Mazel and another CCU executive, real estate consultant Michael Wolfe, serve on REBNY’s residential management council as legal advisor and chair, respectively.

CCU’s website does not mention either REBNY or Homeowners for a Stronger New York, and its connection to those groups has not been previously reported.

REBNY President James Whelan said his organization is proud of its work with CCU. “The premise of this story is that REBNY supports an organization that shares many of the same goals we do,” Whelan said. “That’s not a scandal; it’s advocacy. We’re proud to support efforts that give co-op and condo owners a voice in public policy debates, and we do so transparently, in full compliance with all legal disclosure requirements.”

REBNY has advocated for amending Local Law 97 since the City Council began debating its first draft proposal in late 2017, and it continues to press for more leeway for building owners. In 2022, the group successfully lobbied former Mayor Eric Adams’ administration against stricter caps on building owners’ ability to purchase renewable energy credits to offset their emissions from electricity use — a policy that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has kept in place.

Pete Sikora, the director of climate advocacy at New York Communities for Change, said he believes REBNY is using CCU as political cover in its campaign against Local Law 97.

“Everyone hates billionaire landlords,” said Sikora, “so the landlord lobby pays for front groups to try and shift the focus from them to more sympathetic homeowners.”

This spring, CCU lobbied in support of Governor Kathy Hochul’s push to delay New York’s decarbonization timeline through amendments to the state’s climate law. The group is now leading the charge for a similar rollback of environmental protections in New York City, supporting a City Council bill that would weaken Local Law 97.

Introduced by Councilmember Linda Lee, a Democrat from eastern Queens, the bill would increase buildings’ allowed emissions by including outdoor space as part of their footprint, among other measures. That would significantly increase the carbon budget of garden-style co-ops, where low-rise apartments are accompanied by lawns. The nearly 3,000-apartment Glen Oaks Village complex in northeastern Queens, for example, would be allowed to more than double its emissions, according to a New York Focus analysis of the property’s building and lot data.

“We have a lot of support from elected officials with the idea that Local Law 97 needs to be reformed, especially in light of the amendments this past June,” Mazel told New York Focus, referring to Hochul’s successful effort to scrap the state’s 2030 emissions goal.

Lee’s bill would increase the typical co-op or condo’s annual emissions allowance by 11 percent, according to a report from the Urban Green Council. The bill currently has 22 co-sponsors — just shy of a Council majority. CCU argues it would save co-op shareholders and condo owners from financial ruin. The group also supports a bill sponsored by Councilmember Vickie Paladino that would simply delay the implementation of Local Law 97 by seven years.

In its campaign to defang Local Law 97, CCU works closely with the Presidents Co-op and Condo Council (PCCC), a group of co-op and condo board leaders. That group’s co-founders filed a lawsuit in 2022 seeking to invalidate Local Law 97. The lawsuit, which PCCC co-founder Warren Schreiber told New York Focus was bankrolled by an anonymous “large corporation,” was rejected in 2025 by the state’s top court.

“REBNY, as far as the laws are concerned, has been a tremendous help to us,” Schreiber told New York Focus. He noted that REBNY has helped “put together the wording for some legislation that we’ve presented to City Council members.”

PCCC’s other co-founder, Bob Friedrich, emerged as the co-op world’s loudest and most prolific critic of Local Law 97 long before CCU was founded. Friedrich runs Glen Oaks Village, the largest garden-style co-op in New York City. He says it would have to spend tens of millions of dollars on heat pumps and rewiring to fully electrify in compliance with Local Law 97.

“You’re talking about something that would cost our co-op about $100 million, which would require a special assessment of around $35,000 per shareholder,” said Friedrich. “And we can’t take out loans because we’re already overextended.” (Friedrich has given different projections for the cost in the past. He declined to share detailed estimates he received for the renovations, saying he needed board approval to release “proprietary” information.)

Glen Oaks Village’s 2025 financial statement shows the co-op paid off its mortgage in 2024 and holds over $16 million in investments.

State and city governments have created programs and incentives to help co-ops and condos cover the significant costs of electrification. Most important among these is the state legislature’s recent renewal and expansion of the J-51 program, a tax reduction framework that has allowed many condo owners, co-op shareholders, and owners of affordable apartment buildings to defray much of the cost of major repairs. Both CCU and REBNY advocated for reupping the tax write-off.

The revamped program significantly raises the eligibility threshold and allows buildings to recover 100 percent of “reasonable costs” for the upgrades — up from 70 percent — by abating up to half of their annual property tax bill over several years. “Reasonable costs” would be determined by the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. The City Council is expected to authorize the J-51 expansion soon.

Joe Chavez, the director of sustainable buildings at the Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice, said the revamped J-51 program could be an enormous boon for eligible properties.

“We’ve estimated there are anywhere from 1,300 to 1,400 [co-op and condo developments] that are projected to be over their emissions limits in 2030,” he said. “If they could utilize J-51, they can bring their emissions down, avoid penalties, and come into compliance.”

While the renewed program will benefit co-ops and condos pursuing renovations, it doesn’t provide the initial funding, CCU Legislative Director Jane Menton noted.

“Buildings still have to raise the capital for these projects upfront, either through loans and assessments, and without certainty as to what the certified reasonable cost will be as a percentage of the total cost of the project,” Menton told New York Focus.

“The problem is coming up with the money first,” Friedrich concurred.

Locally, the mayor’s climate office offers a free program called NYC Accelerator to help connect building owners and administrators — including co-op and condo boards — with resources for complying with Local Law 97.

NYC Accelerator will also launch a hub specifically for co-ops sometime next year, staffed with experts on co-op governance and finances, Chavez said.

CCU has continued to hold rallies in support of Lee’s bill to relax Local Law 97 for co-ops. Despite the renewed subsidies, Mazel said, the law is “still an economic poison pill for the building.”

The confrontation took place in the late morning in a quiet hallway on the third floor of 26 Federal Plaza, nine floors below the long-standing courtrooms that bustle with immigrant families, attorneys, and court observers. Security guards stopped Goldman and several staffers as they tried to enter a room where about 20 people, almost all without lawyers, were supposed to report for their hearings on Wednesday.

New York Focus was also barred from entry, though observers could still view the proceedings online or inside a courtroom upstairs. Several Department of Homeland Security police officers joined Goldman in the hallway.

“That’s ICE’s space,” one of them said, referring to the private courtroom. “So we have to talk to someone at ICE if they want to allow you into this space.”

Other makeshift courtrooms have recently popped up nationwide, NPR has reported, including one in a building occupied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Washington, D.C. Some immigration judges have started calling them “basement court,” one told New York Focus. But this appears to be the first such courtroom in New York. The move is one of many initiated by the federal government to dramatically ramp up deportation orders. 

Goldman has previously joined other members of Congress in suing ICE to gain access to its detention facilities.

Betsy Schmid, Goldman’s deputy district director, told New York Focus that the office had been trying to get answers about the third floor courtroom for weeks. She said the Department of Homeland Security said the courtroom was overseen by the Executive Office of Immigration Review, under the Department of Justice, which runs the country’s immigration courts. But the Justice Department, she said, had insisted the courtroom was Homeland Security’s space.

“The runaround,” Goldman said, “is clearly intended to prevent me from exercising my statutory right to conduct oversight over the Department of Homeland Security.”

“What are they hiding?” he added.

Documented and The City Reporter previously reported that in recent days, some immigrants had been directed to hearings on the third floor, limiting public access and causing widespread confusion.

The rationale for the new courtroom is unclear, but immigrant rights advocates say the change of venue to a poorly marked, low-traffic area of the building could prevent people from attending their hearings, which generally results in the judge issuing deportation orders. They also fear it could be a way to enable ICE to detain people more easily, since a judge ordered a temporary halt to immigration arrests at courthouses in New York earlier this year. There are no reports of ICE arrests at the courtroom since it opened.

Court observers, attorneys and advocates have started calling it “black site court.”

Goldman’s staff waited to speak with the ICE chief of staff in the building. They tried to call EOIR, to no avail. Eventually, a commander with the Federal Protective Service told them they had to speak with Acting Assistant Chief Immigration Judge John Burns. At that point, nearly an hour after Goldman and his staff arrived on the third floor, the congressmember decided to leave.

Goldman said it was the first time he had been denied access to an immigration court hearing.

Neither DHS nor EOIR responded to requests for comment by New York Focus.

“As it continues to add new immigration judges, EOIR will continue to make scheduling adjustments, to include opening new hearing locations as needed, to ensure all cases are handled in a timely and lawful manner,” the office said in a statement to Documented.

The third floor hearings were overseen remotely by Immigration Judge Brett Geiger, who took the bench last month. He addressed the immigrants in the room from a computer screen, while the attorney representing the Department of Homeland Security sat in the 12th floor courtroom where observers could watch the proceedings. One person with an attorney, a 16-year-old from Guatemala, was also directed to that upstairs courtroom for his hearing, limiting those in the third-floor room to immigrants representing themselves.

Of the 22 immigrants with hearings scheduled in the room, at least nine did not show up and Geiger ordered them deported in absentia.

Most of the people whose hearings New York Focus observed were in their teens. Geiger gave each of them a new hearing and told them they would likely be assigned to see a different judge in the future.

Some said they had received little notice for the day’s hearing.

“We are in the process of getting some help, but then suddenly I got hit with this court appearance, because my understanding was that it was scheduled for December 1,” the mother of a teenage girl told the judge.

“I see in the record that the hearing was moved up to an earlier day,” Geiger told her.

The DHS attorney told Geiger that the agency would request a deportation order at the next hearing, scheduled for October 28, if the girl didn’t submit an asylum application or other petition for status.

These are just some of the things New York students are learning in their schools’ sexual education classes, according to a new report released Wednesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

Researchers reviewed sex ed curricula used by 50 school districts across the state in the 2023–24 school year and found that more than one third contained medically inaccurate or misleading information. 

NYCLU selected a sample of 50 school districts across the state, including the five largest, and requested their K-12 sexual health curricula from the 2023–24 school year. Researchers evaluated each document using the nonprofit-developed National Sex Education Standards and assigned districts scores based on whether their materials were medically accurate, inclusive, and covered consent, abstinence, harm reduction, and STI prevention.

Many districts also omitted lessons about LGBTQ people, prevention of STIs, contraception, consent, and abortion, the report found. It also identified bright spots, with some districts providing comprehensive lessons on healthy relationships, dating violence, sexual assault, and other topics acknowledging diverse student experiences. 

New York does not require school districts to provide comprehensive sex ed besides instruction on HIV and AIDs and child sexual abuse prevention. Instead, school districts largely determine what students learn about human sexuality in health class, resulting in a patchwork of approaches across the state. 

That means students in one district could be taught about safe sex and pregnancy prevention, while students in a neighboring district are taught only about abstinence.

Bills regulating what is taught in schools are “very difficult to move” because of New York’s deeply embedded culture as a local-control state, said Assemblymember Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas, who first introduced legislation requiring schools to teach comprehensive sex education in 2021. The few curricula bills that do pass are typically part of the state budget, when many non-fiscal policies are able to pass with less scrutiny than standalone bills. 

“I think there’s also sadly still an uncomfortableness with sex, sexuality, and children,” Gonzalez-Rojas told New York Focus. “But we might see a lot less sexual assault, rape, and intimate partner violence if young people have the tools early on to understand what consent means and to really grasp it.” 

Gonzalez-Rojas said she hopes NYCLU’s report will move the needle on passing her bill, called the Healthy and Safe Students Act, which would require public schools to teach medically accurate and inclusive K-12 sex education that reflects national standards and covers issues including healthy relationships, body image, and self-esteem. 

As recently as 2024, New York ranked among the top 10 in the nation for gonorrhea and chlamydia rates, and its teen pregnancy rates rose between 2021 and 2023 for the first time in two decades, according to the latest available state data. A vast body of research has linked teen pregnancy and birth to difficulty completing high school, pursuing higher education, and getting well-paying jobs. And decades of research show that abstinence-only sex ed does not reliably reduce teen sexual activity.

New York Focus reached out to all 50 school districts mentioned in the study. Many did not respond by publication time, though some provided statements disagreeing with NYCLU’s analysis. Those statements are included in the map above.

NYCLU reported that 10 of the districts in the report have a strict abstinence-only curriculum, while four others did not cover even basic anatomy and reproduction in their sex health curriculum. Only nine districts present abortion as an option during pregnancy, while three districts include information from the anti-abortion groups Project Truth, American Pregnancy Association, and Birthright International in their curricula, according to the study. 

Seventeen districts use materials that the NYCLU classified as shame and fear-based instruction. For instance, in Hamburg Central School District, which serves 3,100 students in Erie County, a presentation on abstinence tells students that pre-marital sex can cause marital issues down the line, including “extramarital sexual affairs” and low trust stemming from “knowing that your spouse has had sexual relations with other people.” The rest of the presentation focuses on how having sex can lead to feelings of disappointment, emptiness, regret, and guilt.

Over 360 miles away, Mahopac Central School District in Putnam County teaches students that birth control pills put girls at greater risk of contracting an STI, according to curriculum materials it sent NYCLU. (There is no clear evidence that birth control pills increase susceptibility to STIs.) Another slide lists celebrities it says have chosen abstinence, including Lady Gaga and Robert Pattinson, who have both recently had children with partners they are not married to.

Massena Central School District’s curriculum features a list of historical figures it claims had syphilis, though there’s no historical evidence that three of them — Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, and Vincent van Gogh — ever had the disease. 

In Suffolk County’s Smithtown Central School District, a list of “behavioral clues of a potential rapist” includes a preoccupation with sex. Meanwhile, the Canandaigua City School District in Ontario County presents students with misleading and false statistics, including claims that one in five women will become pregnant the first time they have sex, and one in two will become pregnant within six months of becoming sexually active. (The materials were likely referring to decades-old studies on premarital pregnancy rates among women who do not use any form of contraception.) 

Hamburg, Mahopac, Massena, Smithtown, and Canandaigua school districts did not provide comment before publication.

A 2023 meta-analysis of 34 studies found that comprehensive sex education was associated with improved sexual health knowledge and adolescents’ confidence in their ability to make decisions related to sexual health. 

New York’s HIV instruction mandate puts it among 42 states that require some form of sexual education, but many states require a much broader range of instruction. California, Oregon, and Washington, for example, mandate comprehensive sex ed in all public schools. New Jersey and Rhode Island require sex ed to cover consent, healthy relationships, and sexual orientation.

Last year, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a nonprofit advocacy group, rated New York among the 10 worst states in the country for sex ed, alongside Wisconsin and Oklahoma. It was the only state in the Northeast to make the list. 

“New York is seen as this beacon of progressiveness when it comes to education, but we are extremely behind other states when it comes to sex education,” said Aliyah Ansari, NYCLU senior education strategist who co-authored the new study. “A lot of students are getting inaccurate information, and feeling shamed and stigmatized for their identities and the choices they’ve made about their bodies and relationships.” 

Ansari said the study indicates little has changed since 2012, when the group published its first report on statewide sex ed. That report found that districts often used materials that included inaccuracies about human anatomy, harmful gender stereotypes, and shame-based messages around sex and sexuality.

In a statement, New York State United Teachers union spokesperson Anna Gronewold said that “while NYSUT typically opposes direct curriculum mandates, we remain engaged in conversations to ensure all New York students receive current and comprehensive health education.” 

State Senator Julia Salazar, who sponsors the Healthy and Safe Students Act in her chamber, said she was shocked by the report’s results. State leaders should have no more tolerance for false information in sex education as they would in a subject like math or science, she argued.

With the Trump administration scaling back and reshaping federally funded teen pregnancy prevention and sex ed programs, Salazar said it’s even more urgent for state leaders to act.

“It’s heartbreaking to think of the negative impact this abstinence-only and shame-inducing messaging about sex can have on young people,” Salazar said. “In New York, we really shouldn’t tolerate harmful curricula that, at its worst, is traumatizing young people, but otherwise is not preparing them to be confident and have bodily autonomy and healthy sexuality.”

After earning a safety certification from the National Offshore Wind Training Center — a collaboration between Long Island’s Suffolk County Community College, the Long Island Federation of Labor and multinational wind farm developer Orsted — Bishop worked on a wind farm near Rhode Island. Now he’s doing structural inspections and maintenance on Sunrise Wind, which is under construction off the coast of Long Island. 

But the Trump administration’s efforts to crush offshore wind projects, part of its broader assault on clean energy, have created deep uncertainty for training programs like NOWTC and workers like Bishop.

“I would definitely do this forever, and I’ve looked into it since getting the job. But, I see contracts are falling through nonstop now in America,” said Bishop. “This might be the last one for a while.”

In 2021, the Biden administration set a target to generate 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by the end of the decade, starting from almost zero, which jump-started a massive effort to train people for jobs in the industry. That rapid ramp-up would have required an estimated 77,000 workers — to build the wind farms, connect the turbines to the grid, operate and maintain the facilities, manufacture the rugged steel components and more. 

To that end, several states and energy developers collaborated with universities, unions and community workforce groups on a variety of offshore wind education and training initiatives, including safety certifications for skilled laborers, apprenticeships for turbine technicians and graduate programs in offshore wind planning and policy.

But since President Donald Trump took office for his second term, an offshore wind industry that seemed primed to explode has been pummeled by legal, administrative and economic challenges. While the Trump administration has also taken aim at solar and onshore wind, it has the most leverage over projects offshore, where the federal government is the landlord. The onshore wind industry in the United States already dwarfed its offshore cousin and continues to grow, for now, despite federal pushback. But the near-term outlook for offshore wind is bleak, and there could be more lasting consequences if wind developers shy away from investing in a market they perceive as risky. 

When it comes to energy policy, “the pendulum always swings from one president to another,” said Timothy Fox, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, an industry research firm based in Washington, D.C. “But now the swings are so dramatic that the pendulum’s going to fall off the clock.”

For now, offshore wind training programs are staying afloat by downsizing, focusing on skills that are also useful for careers outside of offshore wind or sending graduates to work on the handful of offshore projects already under construction when Trump took office. The leaders of these training initiatives insist that an energy-hungry nation still needs offshore power and that the wind boom isn’t dead, just delayed. 

“We’re not making any decisions right now,” said Roger Clayman, a NOWTC director and the retired executive director of the Long Island Federation of Labor. “Offshore wind will be back.”

The domestic offshore wind industry is still in its infancy; the first commercial-scale wind farm, off the Long Island coast, only started delivering power in December 2023. Back then, the industry seemed poised for exponential growth spurred by billions in federal grants, tax credits, loans and other spending under Biden. Several much larger wind farms were already under construction and dozens more were in the permitting pipeline. 

A March 2024 report by the Department of Energy estimated that the nation would face a massive deficit of qualified wind workers by 2030. “We anticipated not only expanding but that there would be multiple centers,” said Matthew Aracich, another NOWTC director and the president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Nassau and Suffolk Counties in New York.

Instead, the wind rush came to a screeching halt on Jan. 20, 2025. One of Trump’s first actions of his second term was to sign the “wind order,” pausing all new leases and permit approvals for both onshore and offshore projects. Later that year, the government issued emergency “stop work” orders on the five offshore wind projects under construction, arguing that they raised national security concerns. 

Both the stop work orders and the wind order were eventually overturned in federal courts. But the Trump administration’s war on offshore wind continued on other fronts. 

The government rolled back renewable energy tax credits, which it labeled “market distorting subsidies for unreliable, foreign controlled energy sources,” and rescinded hundreds of millions in grants earmarked for offshore wind and related projects. Meanwhile, the administration has tried to revoke existing permits for offshore wind and slow-walk permitting reviews for new wind projects. Earlier this year, the administration started paying wind energy developers to abandon their offshore leases. 

The combined effects have dimmed offshore wind’s near-term prospects. There are about 6 gigawatts of offshore wind online or under construction off the U.S. coast — less than a third of what the Biden administration had approved for construction. And no new offshore wind farms have broken ground since he left office. That could leave the programs preparing skilled laborers for offshore construction jobs in the lurch when all existing wind projects are complete.

“I think we’re going to be busy into 2027. How deep into 2027, we don’t know,” said Clayman. That’s when Orsted’s Sunrise Wind off the coast of Long Island is scheduled for completion. (Orsted declined to be interviewed for this story, as did Equinor, another major wind-farm developer in U.S. waters that invested in workforce development.) 

Similar questions are facing other unions that upskilled their members for offshore wind jobs, including the Pile Drivers Local Union 56 in Boston, whose workers needed extra training to handle the massive offshore piles that can weigh about 1,800 tons. The heavy-lift training was supported by the international offshore energy company Deme, and grants from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, a state economic development agency. These workers helped build Vineyard Wind 1, completed this March off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, and Revolution Wind, off the coast of Rhode Island, which was just finished.   

“Right now, our projects are on the tail end,” said John Dunderdale, business manager for the pile drivers’ union. He said the trained workers assisted with projects off the coast of New York, and the union had been approached about sending workers to help build overseas wind farms. 

With or without new offshore wind projects, there’s plenty of work for pile drivers and other skilled labor on normal building and infrastructure projects. But Dunderdale mourns the missed opportunities, notably the New England Wind and SouthCoast Wind projects, both of which were on the cusp of starting construction when Trump took office but are now on indefinite hold. 

“We should have been on to the next one,” he said. “The jobs were there. The training was there. The money, you know, everything was there.”

Other training programs are trying to adapt to the new realities of offshore wind, too. A half-hour drive from the NOWTC, on the campus of Stony Brook University, about a dozen undergraduates recently gathered in a lab for a lesson on wiring high-voltage direct current, or HVDC. Huddled around docking stations the size of vending machines, they attempted different wiring setups with simulated HVDC, which, because it transmits electricity efficiently over long distances, is often used for energy sources like wind and solar that are far from population centers. 

The class was one of several started in 2024 on State University of New York campuses as part of an effort called the Offshore Wind Training Institute, funded with $20 million from the state and the SUNY system. The class was designed to prepare people specifically for the emerging offshore wind industry. But more recently, it has shifted to focus on a wider range of HVDC applications, such as connecting solar farms to battery storage and integrating regional grids.  

“Luckily, we have a skill and a discipline that we’re teaching these students that does not entirely rely on offshore wind,” said Derek O’Connor, senior workforce development manager in Stony Brook’s Office for Research and Innovation. 

A similar pivot occurred within “A Taste of the Trades,” a paid summer training program for local high schoolers created two years ago by Stony Brook, Suffolk County Community College, Brookhaven National Laboratory and a company working on the Sunrise Wind project. The program offers hands-on learning for a wide range of jobs in the energy sector, including welding and microgrid development. The first summer, networking events and visits to job sites were designed to introduce students to opportunities in offshore wind, but more recently, students have been exposed to a wider range of electric grid operations and infrastructure jobs.   

The more you look at the variety of skills needed for work in offshore wind, the more you see overlaps with what’s needed in the nation’s energy sector writ large, said O’Connor. “We’ve been flexible and agile in responding to some of the changes, being less focused on the power generation source and more about grid stability and reliability.”

Indeed, despite the political attacks on offshore wind and the diminishing opportunities, the clean energy sector overall faces a big and growing shortage of workers. Wind turbine technicians and solar installers, for example, are among the fastest growing occupations in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

“The industry continues to grow, even with the uncertainty that we’re experiencing,” said Abby Huston, vice president of programs for the Clean Power Institute, the nonprofit workforce development arm of the American Clean Power Association, a national advocacy and trade organization. “What we’ve found is there’s a lot more adaptation in terms of how to build workforce programs rather than closing them down, because there’s still such a huge need.”

Other examples: Her group is partnering with schools and community colleges to build awareness of clean energy and its career opportunities broadly; the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center has shifted some of its funding focus from offshore wind to a new, broader portfolio in “ocean tech,” such as improving coastal resilience and monitoring the health of marine ecosystems by analyzing traces of DNA in the water; and a Maryland state job training program created in 2022 to bolster the offshore wind industry has placed thousands of people in fields requiring similar skills such as shipbuilding and aerospace. 

Meanwhile, energy industry experts say there are plenty of reasons to believe that offshore wind could eventually make a comeback; the surging demand and cost of energy is putting more pressure on policymakers to tap every available source. 

Back at the NOWTC, workers are still signing up for training, but they are increasingly people renewing their certifications, which last two years, rather than first-timers, according to Clayman. 

This summer, one of those workers renewing their certificates was Bishop. He estimates that he has another year on the Sunrise project before it’s completed. At that point, he’ll likely return to working construction onshore — unless there’s a dramatic shift in offshore wind’s fortunes.

A new districtwide policy prohibits the devices in kindergarten through second grade with few exceptions. Instead, teachers are emphasizing traditional, hands-on learning through activities like games, puzzles, and pen-and-paper assignments.

The screen-free classrooms arrived after a grassroots effort from local parents in Croton-on-Hudson, an affluent, highly educated suburban village on the Hudson River, 40 miles north of Manhattan. 

Formed in July 2025, the Croton Community Collective has amassed more than 400 local members, built a network of parents who’ve tried to give their children a screen-free childhood, reshaped the school board, and secured several changes limiting the use of educational technology in instruction

It’s part of a larger push by the community, where many parents have pledged to delay giving their children smart phones. Volunteers have stocked scores of local businesses with boxes of books and magazines, so that kids have a screen-free way to pass the time while waiting for a haircut or sitting at a diner. And over 100 families have installed landlines in their homes to help children stay connected sans cell phones.  

“We want Croton to be famous for being a town that brought back childhood, at home and at school,” said local parent Jill Anderson, who founded the coalition. “We want people to move here for their kids to have a different life, like the way it used to be.”

Ed tech has become a fixture in classrooms nationwide in the past decade. Today, most US children spend at least part of their school day on a laptop or tablet. Advocates say the shift in instruction is key to preparing students for a technology-driven workforce, while critics say it sets students back, citing research that has linked excessive screen time to poorer academic performance, lower attention spans, and behavioral issues.  

A growing number of parents and teachers are mobilizing to put the brakes on the trend. 

Danny Zeliger, a local parent who teaches high school English in another district, is one of them. A decade ago, when he was instructed to have his students use an online grammar and writing program, he remembers looking out at a classroom full of students absorbed in their screens and thinking, “It looked less like joy, and more like opiates.” 

So Zeliger does not allow his own young children to use iPads. But at a parent orientation for his daughter’s school just over a year ago, he learned that teachers regularly provided them to students in the classroom. 

“You can imagine how hard it is to not give your kid an iPad at home, and then the first one they receive is from their kindergarten teacher,” he said. 

As a member of the Croton Community Collective, Zeliger said he’s excited by the district’s new guidelines. 

In addition to the early elementary school changes, students in grades 3 and 4 now share iPads from classroom carts rather than keeping individual devices at their desks. Fifth graders are no longer allowed to bring their iPads home at the end of the school day, and sixth graders can’t take them home on weekends. Teachers have stopped using online read-alouds, letting students watch videos during snack and movement breaks, or offering technology as a reward for students who finish work early.

And at the high school level, teachers are also instructed to limit the use of devices and avoid relying on video-based lessons.

More districts could follow in Croton’s footsteps soon. A bill filed by Sen. Andrew Gounardes last month would sharply limit screen use in schools and “create a right to analog learning.” New York City Public Schools has taken its own approach, announcing a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI and caps on screen time through middle school. 

Croton Superintendent Stephen Walker said the 1,500-student district’s new approach is to ensure technology “earns its way into a classroom rather than becoming a default resource within each student’s experience.” 

But it took Croton time to get there. 

For more than a year, ed tech and screen time have been a recurring source of discussion — and at times, tension — at Croton school board meetings, as parents questioned how children were using devices in the classroom. 

At a June 2025 meeting, for example, Don Laird told board members that he’d made the “heartbreaking” decision to withdraw his children from the district due largely to concerns over screen time. For several years, the district had provided all of its elementary and middle school students with iPads. Laird said his kindergartener would come home describing advertisements he had seen on classroom screens, his teacher showing a video of someone reading a book instead of reading it aloud, and students watching videos during snack time.

“These aren’t isolated incidents,” Laird told board members at the time. “They paint a picture of a classroom where technology is being used to subdue and distract students rather than engage and develop them.” 

Six months later, in December, Claire Benoist told the school board that her 5-year-old daughter was watching videos on YouTube and online learning platforms in kindergarten throughout each school day. “We feel that we are feeding our kids brainrot, and it is being disguised as ed tech,” she said. 

The group started making concerted efforts to get the district to implement three of its priorities: enforcing the state’s cell phone ban throughout the entire school day, including during passing periods and lunch; keeping young children off iPads; and ensuring school-issued devices are not being sent home after school. 

Parents zeroed in on the May 2026 school board election as a way to make sure they were taken seriously. In April, the Croton Community Collective held a packed forum asking board hopefuls to discuss their views on ed tech. While the group did not directly endorse any candidates, two of its members ran on platforms that prioritized reducing screen time in schools and both went on to defeat incumbent candidates, including one who had been on the board since 1998. 

Around the same time, the push to rein in ed tech was gaining momentum both nationally and across New York: The American Federation of Teachers, a national labor union, unveiled its “devices-down, eyes-up, hands-on” policy framework, and the New York State United Teachers union issued a statement advocating for strict, developmentally appropriate limits on tech use. 

By the time the board election approached, the Croton-Harmon school district had already started reexamining its technology usage, Walker told New York Focus. In March, the district reported reducing its spending on ed tech software by nearly 33 percent and stopped sending devices home with K-5 students. According to a school board presentation, average daily screen use from January through April began to decline over the previous year. 

In June, the district held a teacher summit to discuss ed tech in the classroom, and shortly after, it told teachers it would adopt new guidelines for screen use, step up enforcement of the phone ban, and prioritize pen-and-paper instruction. 

Walker said he’s heard from more parents concerned about screens than on any other issue over the course of his career. 

“This was one of those times when we were able to say, ‘There’s a movement here, and there’s an impetus to ask some really challenging questions about our system,’” he said.

The district allocated around $40,000 to replace digital tools with high-quality, analog resources including manipulative math games, new class sets of books, workbooks, dictionaries, and puzzles. The hope is that the district will save some money in the long term by canceling its subscriptions to online learning programs and no longer having to keep up with a 1-1 device program. 

So far, it’s been an adjustment for some local teachers. 

Losing access to digital learning resources feels “like the rug was pulled out underneath us,” said Tara Carlucci, who has been teaching kindergarten in the district for two decades. 

Last school year, she said her students used iPads at learning stations to practice handwriting and learn to count. But while she believes that most teachers used technology responsibly, she understands why the changes were necessary to address educators who have become overly reliant on it. 

Kindergarten teacher Dana Buckhout echoed the sentiment, noting that she is still trying to figure out how to differentiate instruction for struggling students who used the iPad as a tool. But since the school year started a couple weeks ago, she said she’s really not feeling the loss of devices. 

“It feels so troubling when you are just one person trying to reduce technology, or even if it’s just one grade level or school,” she said. But acting collectively creates more impact, she said. “We’re all fighting for the same thing, because obviously there needs to be a shift.” 

The first panel focused on the AI industry, and New York’s role in regulating it. New York Focus Editor-in-Chief Akash Mehta led a discussion with Assemblymember Alex Bores, who sponsored the RAISE act, one of the nation’s most ambitious AI safety bills, and Garrison Lovely, author of Obsolete: The AI Industry’s Trillion-Dollar Race to Replace Us — and How to Stop It, which will be released later this month.

Here are some highlights of their discussion:

States have a critical role in regulating AI.

Comprehensive AI regulation may eventually need to come from Congress, which has more legal powers to regulate AI companies than states do, and can set the rules for the entire country at once. But with President Donald Trump opposed to greater AI regulation, and Congress seemingly in no hurry to act, states have an important role to play in the near future.

“When you have a technology that moves as quickly as AI, that calls for an increased role for states, because state legislatures move so much faster than Congress does,” Bores said.

States also “much more regularly amend laws and sunset laws and change them,” Bores noted. State laws and regulations that are successful can “become the national standard,” he said.

New York lawmakers are planning to push more AI-focused laws.

Last year, Bores led the charge to pass New York’s RAISE Act, which stands for Responsible AI Safety and Education. When it takes effect in 2027, it will require more public transparency from developers of the most advanced AI models, and obligate those developers to notify the state of incidents that risk major damage to people or property. 

But Bores thinks Albany lawmakers should go further. He described laws requiring AI companies not to release new models that are likely to cause danger, and protecting whistleblowers who warn authorities about specific AI threats to public safety. 

There are already indications that lawmakers want to return to the topic when Albany’s legislative session kicks off in January. Bores noted that Assemblymember-elect Brian Romero, a Democrat representing Queens, plans to introduce a bill to ban the use of superintelligent AI in New York, paralleling a similar federal bill from US Senator Bernie Sanders.

Data center moratorium — useful or not?

Anti-data center activism has been the most public and widespread opposition to the new developments of the AI age. In July, Governor Kathy Hochul signed a one-year moratorium on especially large data center construction, to give the state time to study how the facilities affect the environment and power grid. But the push for a national data center moratorium may not effectively rein in AI, Lovely argued.

“AI is moving really fast, and that’s with the data centers they have now,” Lovely said. And new computer chips could enable AI companies to run ever more powerful models without needing to build new data centers.

“I worry that if we get a national moratorium, people will be like ‘We did it’ and then AI keeps going crazy and hacking into shit,” Lovely said.

The AI industry wants to send a message with their political spending.

Some politicians may want to go big on regulating AI. But the AI industry is willing to spend huge sums of money to convince them not to take action. When Bores ran for Congress this year, an AI-funded PAC called Leading the Future spent $8 million opposing his campaign. Despite a pro-AI regulation PAC — also heavily funded by AI industry players — that spent even more money supporting Bores, he ultimately lost the Democratic primary to fellow state Assemblymember Micah Lasher. 

Bores pointed out that unlike many PACs, which prefer to operate in the shadows, Leading the Future was very public about why it was spending millions against him. The group said Bores’s RAISE Act would “handcuff” AI companies and “open the door for China” to achieve AI dominance.

Bores said that Leading the Future’s spending was not just meant to defeat him, but also “aimed at sending a message to everyone else.”

That message: ‘Hey, don’t be the person that actually takes us on, because we will come after you.’”

The GOP incumbent’s new seven-figure ad campaign, launched last week, cites Conley’s consulting work for two defense tech firms as an indication that she “wants to build data centers in the Hudson Valley.” An accompanying press release asks, “Does she support Governor [Kathy] Hochul’s moratorium on new large data centers, yes or no?” 

There’s just one catch: Conley has already said she backs Hochul’s one-year pause on data center construction, while Lawler has criticized the pause as reflecting a broader anti-business climate in New York.

“When you look at the situation, and Kathy Hochul implements a statewide moratorium, what she is saying is, ‘Don’t come here, go do your business elsewhere,’ which is why New York state leads the nation in outmigration,” Lawler told Fox Business in August.

Conley, meanwhile, has championed Hochul’s moratorium, saying in July that, if elected, she would “push at the federal level for similar responsible regulation and legislation to ensure that data center companies are not exploiting our communities.”

Lawler’s new ad campaign disregards this record; the 30-second spot replays — three times — a clip of Conley saying, during an April candidate forum, “We need data centers.”

It leaves out what she said just beforehand: “Local officials who are approving these projects need to understand the harm that they are going to bring. … Communities [are] unwittingly agreeing to terms where these data centers are literally profiting off the backs of our communities.” 

“We need data centers. We’re not going to get rid of them,” she continued, but added, “We can mandate things to make sure they are better going forward than what we are seeing play out.” 

As of July, Conley still worked with one of the two firms at the center of Lawler’s ad campaign, according to an interview with the Rockland County Business Journal. But she said that hasn’t influenced her views on data centers.  

Lawler’s campaign did not answer New York Focus’s questions about his position on Hochul’s moratorium or a number of controversial data center projects in the district. 

“Congressman Lawler believes local residents should decide what gets built in their community,” wrote Lawler’s campaign manager Ciro Riccardi in an emailed statement. “Municipalities should use every tool available to protect residents’ quality of life and keep the cost off ratepayers, who already pay a third more for electricity than New Jersey and Pennsylvania because of Albany’s energy policies.”

Lawler is currently cosponsoring a bill, called the Ratepayer Protection Act, aimed at making data centers pay the full cost of any infrastructure upgrades needed to meet their voracious energy demands. The bipartisan bill has drawn opposition from an industry trade group, the Data Center Coalition, which says it unfairly singles out the computing facilities. The bill passed the US House of Representatives on Wednesday evening with almost unanimous support.

But Lawler has steered clear of local fights. 

He has not taken a position — either publicly or in response to New York Focus’s questions — on the expansion of a Rockland County data center operated by the Texas-based company Databank. The project is one of several in the area that have received large tax breaks from local authorities, and it has generated significant local backlash over concerns that it could raise power bills and contaminate the local water supply. (Databank has said the facility will use a closed-loop water system that poses no risk to the adjacent reservoir.) 

Conley announced her opposition to the center in July. 

“Let’s be clear — Cait Conley supports a data center moratorium. Mike Lawler opposes one,” said Conley spokesperson Maddy Rosen in a statement. “Mike Lawler can lie all he wants to cover up his disastrous record, but at the end of the day, all you have to do is follow the money.”

Conley’s campaign pointed to donations to Lawler’s campaign from banks that have built data centers in the district, namely JPMorganChase and Morgan Stanley. (Lawler has received donations from many other financial services companies as well.)

Her camp also highlighted Lawler’s support for data center–friendly legislation, including President Donald Trump’s flagship One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025. An early House version that Lawler voted for would have barred states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade. That provision was blocked by the Senate, but the final law included others that could fuel data center construction. 

Conley’s campaign told New York Focus, however, that she supports the Ratepayer Protection Act. 

As the data center fight consumes the midterm elections, containing energy costs is one area of bipartisan agreement. Trump, too, has embraced a version of the idea: This summer, he pledged to keep consumer bills low, though he has lately defended data centers in increasingly strident terms. 

“There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China,” he wrote on Truth Social on Monday. “WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS!” 

Update: September 17, 2026 — This article was updated to note that after publication, the Ratepayer Protection Act passed the US House of Representatives with near-unanimous support.  

The day they toured a brick Tudor-style home with rust-colored gables and high ceilings in St. Albans, Queens, she knew immediately that it was theirs.

That feeling of euphoria lasted for 40 years, until she received a letter in 2024 from New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection: “Our records indicate that your water service line is made of lead,” read the letter, which was reviewed by New York Focus. It said homeowners were responsible for their lead pipes and required to replace them in accordance with federal regulations.

The pipe may be leaching a hazardous neurotoxin into her drinking water, but replacing it would cost more than $10,000, she later found. And as a retired senior now living alone on a fixed income, she simply can’t afford it. 

Last week, New York City announced that it had received its fourth allotment of $24 million from the federal government to replace lead service pipes, which carry water into homes. To date, it’s received a total of over $143 million from a combination of federal grants and loans and state funding. With that, the city said it should be able to remove up to 7,000 lead serve lines on private properties in low-income and highly polluted neighborhoods. But Deyounge-Ezell’s home is not one of them.

Under a 2024 Biden-era federal rule, all of the country’s lead pipes must be replaced by 2037. The Environmental Protection Agency projects that New York state, home to some of the oldest housing stock in the country, will need to replace nearly 385,000 lead service lines — the third-highest concentration among all states, after Illinois and Ohio. The rule set a deadline and some parameters, but left states to figure out the details — and did not require water utilities to cover the full cost of replacement.

The federal government pays for the majority of lead pipe replacement through a yearly allotment to the state, which then determines which municipalities receive that funding and how much. So far, New York state has received $633 million in grants and loans through the federal fund and chipped in $258 million of its own money to pay off the loan portion. 

The design of the federal law has left “intentional policy gaps that state and localities need to fill,” said Joshua Klainberg, senior vice president at New York League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, an environmental advocacy group that created a detailed map using state data to track the presence of lead pipes. 

But New York doesn’t have a statewide standard for how cities should approach lead pipe replacement.

So decisions about how the pipes are replaced and who bears the cost vary drastically depending on where residents live. New York City, like some localities across the state, does not pay to replace residents’ lead service lines except in limited instances. About 350 miles north of Deyounge-Ezell’s home in Queens, the city of Rochester has committed to doing full service line replacement at no cost to homeowners by 2030.

New York Focus spoke with officials from municipalities across the state — ranging from small villages to large cities — and found that the jigsawed approach has led to uneven outcomes, with some residents being offered lead-free drinking water at no cost to homeowners and others facing a choice between steep bills or potentially contaminated water.

There is no safe level of exposure to lead, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can inflict irreparable damage on children, causing developmental delays, behavioral problems, and difficulty learning. In adults, exposure can cause brain and kidney damage and lead to cancer, heart disease, increased blood pressure, and stroke.

Drinking water remains one of the most significant sources of lead exposure in New York. 

“Safe drinking water shouldn’t depend on your ZIP code or your ability to write a $5,000 or $10,000 check,” said Assemblymember Amy Paulin, who sponsored a bill this legislative session that would require water utilities to replace all lead pipes at no cost to the homeowner, ridding the state of its patchwork system. 

“Ultimately, this bill is about treating lead service line replacement as a public health responsibility, not an individual homeowner’s responsibility,” she added.

The bill made it through committee in both the Senate and Assembly but never made it to the floor. 

The question of who owns different parts of the lead service line — and who is responsible for paying for its removal — is central to the lead pipe debate.

Water utilities sued the Biden administration after it finalized its lead pipe replacement rule, arguing that the 2037 timeline was not feasible, costs were steep, and that they did not have authority over pipes under private property. The Trump administration upheld the mandate this spring.

In many cases, the lead service line is divided up into two sides: the public side, which runs from the water main to the curb, and the private side, which runs from the curb into the home. Some cities have decided to replace only the public side, a move many experts and scientists fear could cause lead concentrations to spike because it can disturb and shake small lead particles loose on the private side. Those sorts of partial replacements don’t count toward federal reduction targets, either.

“Responsibility for addressing this patchwork is squarely on the shoulders of the water utilities who created the problem in the first place,” said Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which has defended the Biden policy. 

The New York Section of the American Water Works Association, which represents water utilities around the state, estimates that it will cost more than $4.8 billion to replace lead pipes in the state. The group said that the high cost, restrictive timeline, and limited state guidance poses challenges for water utilities. Without more funding from states and cities, the group said the cost will trickle down to ratepayers.

“Placing that burden on the water systems without outside funding will push water rates to unaffordable levels,” said Judy Hansen, the group’s legislative consultant, in a written statement. “There must be a funding mechanism on state level to get all the lead out in a safe and cost-effective manner without driving up rates.”

The lack of guidance has left many municipalities at vastly different places in the replacement process. Some are still trying to locate where the lead pipes are. Others have begun replacement. And some have introduced plans that require homeowners to foot the bill.

Rochester began replacing lead pipes on the public side in 2018, years before the federal government required the full service line replacement, with its own money. Since then, the city has replaced almost 12,000 public side and over 1,600 private side lead service lines. That early start, said Rochester Director of Water Bureau Nick Considine, put it first in line for federal funding. 

“We saw some communities try to do it without paying for the whole thing,” Considine said. “We realized early that it would be an unreasonable burden to put on our customers to ask them to chip in.”

Rochester has received approximately $150 million from federal, state, and city funding sources, according to data from the city. There are still almost 14,000 lead service lines on the public side, 3,000 on the private side, and nearly 15,000 unknowns on the private side.

If it receives the maximum award this year, Considine believes the local government will have enough funding to cover the removal of all remaining lead service lines.

New York City has taken a different approach. In the city, like many places, the entire lead service line is privately owned. In the last days of then Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, his Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, outlined its plans for lead pipe replacement stating the city was not required to pay for lead pipe replacement, officials said, and it did not intend to do so, except in specific cases where it deemed an area high-priority, water mains needed to be replaced, or it could secure outside funding. 

The city, which has received one of the largest sums of any municipality in the state, has replaced just 900 privately owned lead service lines to date. It prioritized homes in low-income and highly polluted neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. A city official told New York Focus that Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration does not plan to change the program as it stands now.

“Replacing privately-owned lead service lines is one of my highest priorities as Commissioner, and DEP is working hard to undertake this work in environmental justice neighborhoods,” said DEP Commissioner Lisa Garcia in a statement to New York Focus.

But for many New York City homeowners like Deyounge-Ezell, whose home falls outside the priority areas, the city’s program offers little relief. 

“Everybody becomes disadvantaged when there’s lead in your drinking water,” Deyounge-Ezell said. “ Who’s to say which area is more deprived than another area?”

There are still an estimated 4 million lead pipes across the country, according to the Trump administration, and the status of roughly 22 million are still unknown. New York has identified 251,000 lead service lines. The material of nearly 950,000 lines is still unknown.

Erin Clary, a spokeswoman for the state’s Department of Health, which co-administers federal and state funding for lead pipe replacement, said neither the state nor local government can legally require private homeowners to replace the portions of the water lines they own.

“While the Department encourages all landowners whose properties contain lead service lines to allow replacement of those lines, no enforcement actions can be taken against them for failing to do so,” Clary said in a statement to New York Focus. The agency did not respond to questions about whether it needs a broader, statewide approach to lead pipe replacements.

Clary said the state will move forward with new funding opportunities to help more communities identify and replace lead service lines.

“These continued investments reflect New York’s commitment to protect our neighborhoods and provide peace of mind for families across the state, one glass of water at a time,” Clary said.

Advocates and lawmakers have said it’s unclear whether the state will be able to eradicate its lead infrastructure without a statewide solution outlining who pays for lead pipe replacements. For Rob Hayes, senior director of clean water for Environmental Advocates NY, the clearest and most equitable answer is water utilities.

“The solution is simple: Governor Hochul and the State Legislature should enact the Lead Pipe Replacement Act, which will ensure that New Yorkers unlucky enough to have a lead pipe receive a replacement at no direct cost to them,” Hayes said in a statement. 

Considine of Rochester said the city’s success came down to their decision to act before it was required.

“We’ll do it even if we’re not required to because it’s the right thing,” Considine said. “If the state makes funding available so that this is not an unfunded mandate, then other communities will be able to do what Rochester has been able to do.”

Back in Queens, Deyounge-Ezell wonders whether her situation would be different had she lived somewhere else. Would her pipes already be replaced? Would that have been done at no cost?

Instead, she runs the tap water in her kitchen — which she’s always preferred to bottled water — through her filter and hopes it’s enough.

“I don’t plan on leaving because I can’t,” Deyounge-Ezell said. “It would just be too expensive to leave. It’s cheaper for me to stay.”

“Believe me when I tell you,” Police Chief Christopher Rosabella said, according to the Journal News, “cooperating with ICE or allocating manpower for them is not even on the radar.”

But a New York Focus analysis of data recently released by the Deportation Data Project shows the Port Chester Police Department appears to have honored ICE’s requests to turn people over to the federal agency far more often than most other local law enforcement agencies, with nearly 60 people landing in ICE detention that way since 2024.

Village leadership have said police only contact ICE about people accused of crimes. But 10 immigrants with no documented criminal history were taken into ICE custody shortly after the agency sent detainers to police. That number is by far the highest of any jurisdiction in the state, including ones 50 times its size.

The finding highlights one way local police quietly assist with immigration enforcement, even without the formal contracts with ICE that New York just banned. 

Port Chester, a 30,000-person village that leans Democratic, has never had a so-called 287(g) agreement with ICE, through which local law enforcement can serve immigration warrants and, in some cases, conduct immigration arrests. But that hasn’t prevented the village’s police from helping ICE arrest people after the agency sends them “detainers” — requests that they hold people already in their custody until ICE can pick them up.

Neither Rosabella nor Port Chester Mayor Luis Marino responded to emails or phone calls requesting comment. Marino, who immigrated to the US from Peru in 1985, has said that ICE agents making arrests in Port Chester generally sought people with a criminal record. And local police reached out to the agency only in limited circumstances, he told the Journal News.

“Our Port Chester Police Department is not working with ICE,” he said.  

Police are not required to honor detainers. Many departments around the state, including the New York City Police Department, rarely do so, the data reveals. 

The data doesn’t show explicitly how law enforcement handled the detainers in each case. For this analysis, New York Focus tallied detainers sent to Port Chester that ICE lifted because the person was booked into ICE custody and where the immigration arrest happened within a day of the detainer being sent.

Police are permitted under New York law to communicate with ICE about people in custody. Under a 2018 state court ruling, however, they can’t hold those people longer than necessary so that ICE has time has to show up. 

Experts say it can be hard to know when that rule is violated. “There are certainly a lot of gray areas, and places where law enforcement may be exploiting those gray areas,” said Zachary Ahmad, senior policy counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union. 

A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office told New York Focus that the office is “in touch” with the Port Chester Police Department regarding the agency’s interactions with ICE. She declined to confirm or deny the existence of an investigation. 

ICE has arrested 57 people after sending detainer requests to Port Chester police since 2024, New York Focus’s analysis shows. Though the agency arrested more immigrants who had been in custody at jails in Nassau, Suffolk, Orange, and Rockland counties, as well as at New York City’s Rikers Island jail complex, those facilities each received a much larger number of ICE detainer requests and a smaller share of them resulted in detentions.

Based on ICE data, 17 of the people Port Chester turned over had no criminal history until their contact with the local police. Even after their run-ins with the police, ICE still categorized 10 as “immigration violators,” meaning they had not been charged with crimes. Federal court documents and prior reporting indicate that at least some of them were picked up by police on allegations of basic traffic violations alone, which are not considered crimes and do not normally lead to detention.

On Valentine’s Day, a 54-year-old Colombian asylum seeker was riding a motor scooter when he was stopped by a Port Chester police officer for “driving a motor-scooter that was not yet registered,” according to federal court documents. He was then charged with operating a motor vehicle without a license — a traffic infraction, not a crime.

“Nonetheless, the police department arrested Petitioner and notified ICE,” a federal judge wrote in an opinion on the man’s lawsuit, ordering his immediate release after two months of ICE detention.

Port Chester, where most residents are Hispanic, has been a hotspot for ICE activity. Many arrests, like the one last year of a volunteer firefighter and father named Milton Guamarrigra, took place without any local police involvement. But others began with an interaction with police. 

At the town hall in April, Rosabella said that his agency’s only form of collaboration with ICE involves holding people for the agency if a judge has signed a warrant for their arrest. 

“So, I guess you could say that’s ‘cooperating,’ ” he said, the Journal News reported. “But for us, that’s just normal course of business, right?”

The vast majority of ICE arrests involve administrative warrants, which are signed by ICE officers, not judges. 

“I would have a lot of questions about a claim that a rate of honoring detainers of that magnitude reflects only scenarios where a judicial warrant was provided,” Ahmad said. 

Joan Grangenois-Thomas, a former village trustee, has pressed the town’s leadership to take a strong stance against ICE activity and the police department to answer questions about its interactions with the agency. Many community members already believed the police were working with ICE in some way, she said, adding that the data was “a disappointment, but it’s not a surprise.”

“It leans into this idea that there is some sort of informal cooperation,” she said. 

Grangenois-Thomas said she was cheered by one of New York Focus’s findings: Since April 21, shortly after Rosabella addressed the town hall, none of the seven detainers ICE has sent Port Chester has resulted in a person being detained. 

Gregorio Mayers, dubbed a “Supreme-maker” for his role in getting clients seated on the Supreme Court, has done the same for the borough’s civil court judges, according to records reviewed by New York Focus. 

Over the past two years, all six civil court nominees selected by members of the party’s county committee have employed Mayers as a consultant. In Brooklyn, the Democratic nomination all but assures their election.

The party chair, Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, recently pushed through sweeping changes to party rules after rivals appeared to have lined up enough votes to replace her. The changes, which dramatically expand who can vote in an upcoming party leadership election, would also give the chair even more control over future judicial nominations, according to Tony Melone, president of the New Kings Democrats, a party faction aligned with individuals who are suing Bichotte Hermelyn over the rule changes.

“When one person controls these votes, and one consultant represents all the candidates who are chosen, there is extreme potential for corruption,” Melone said. “Every candidate will see they have to take this path, regardless of what they have to pay.”

On Saturday, Mayers told New York Focus that any suggestion that judicial candidates were “required or directed” to retain him in exchange for political support was “false.”

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Jill Epstein ruled on Monday that a vote passing the proposed rule amendments was “null and void” because district leaders unseated in June primary elections had been allowed to vote. The votes of those outgoing district leaders had allowed the amendments to narrowly pass.

Assemblymember Maritza Davila, who strongly opposes the rule changes, said she doesn’t know why Mayers’s clients have been so successful, but that Mayers and Bichotte Hermelyn were “very good friends,” and that Brooklyn judicial candidates have long felt obligated to hire such consultants.

“I don’t know how that works, but is there something that’s not right about it? Absolutely,” Davila said. In the past, she said, “I know some judges that have even put their houses up [to pay a consultant] to become judges … They’re all looking to become Supreme, and so when any seats come up, they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get there.”  

A person close to another successful judicial candidate, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retribution, said the candidate had told them that Bichotte-Hermelyn had insisted they hire Mayers.

Civil court and Supreme Court judgeships pay $220,800 and $237,300 per year, respectively, and party leaders in Brooklyn have a history of making demands of judicial candidates in exchange for the lucrative roles. In 2007, former party leader Clarence Norman was convicted of extorting two civil court candidates by pressuring them to pay favored campaign vendors in exchange for the party’s support.

Last week, New York Focus reached out to the Brooklyn Democratic Party for comment. Neither Bichotte Hermelyn nor anyone else from the party responded, but on Sunday — before this article’s publication — the party publicly released a lengthy statement referring to reporting in New York Focus and the New York Post as a “false narrative designed to undermine confidence in Brooklyn’s judiciary” and “to smear respected Black political consultants who have spent decades helping candidates and judges navigate the electoral process.”

The timing of the statement was unusual: Neither New York Focus nor the New York Post had published an article on Mayers, and the Post still has not. The statement said the outlets had ignored “repeated corrections, legal explanations, and requests for verification,” but the party has not sent New York Focus any communications.

Mayers, an attorney, professor, and one-time official in former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration, noted that he has consulted for judicial candidates “for many years, beginning years before Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn became Brooklyn Democratic Party Chair.”

Candidates who have publicly disclosed making payments to Mayers have paid him or his firm at least $203,000 since Bichotte Hermelyn became chair in 2020; during the prior six years, campaigns paid Mayers or his firm at least $53,000.

He said clients have come through referrals from clergy, community leaders and others, and there has never been “an agreement or understanding that retaining me would result in a judicial nomination or political support.”

Mayers does not hold a formal position within the Brooklyn Democratic Party, according to his most recently filed conflict of interest disclosure form. This contrasts with the Bronx, where the connection between judicial campaign consultants and the party chair is much clearer. Political consultants working for that county’s Democratic leader, Senator Jamaal Bailey, are the same ones routinely hired by Bronx judicial candidates that win Bailey’s backing. But in Brooklyn, New York Focus could not locate any record of the party or chair making campaign payments to Mayers.

Prominent politicians, ranging from Governor Kathy Hochul to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, have publicly opposed Bichotte Hermelyn’s plan. But they face entrenched party leaders accustomed to handing out jobs and appointments.

State Supreme Court nominees are picked through an internal party process. Democratic nominees for civil court judgeships in New York City are normally elected by voters, but the six recent nominees in Brooklyn were instead chosen by a subset of the party’s county committee because the seats were created by the legislature after petitioning for primary elections had ended.

In 2025, three of the civil court judges tapped in this manner — Chidi Eze, Juliet Howard and Dagmar Plaza-Gonzalez — were all Mayers’s clients, according to an Instagram photo Mayers posted.

At the 2026 nominating meeting, video of the other three nominees’ acceptance speeches shows they thanked Mayers or his firm, GM Consulting.

“Thank you all for your quality service,” Xavier Carr, one of the nominees, said. “We wouldn’t be here today without your assistance.”

Of these six nominees, only two of them — Michelle DeSouza-Forte and Dagmar Plaza-Gonzalez — reported paying the firm through a campaign committee in 2025 or 2026. It’s not clear how much the four other Mayers clients paid GM Consulting this year. 

Five of the six Mayers clients did not respond to attempts to reach them for comment; contact information for the sixth was not available. 

Mayers has also had considerable recent success in helping clients seeking nomination for State Supreme Court judge, as Hell Gate first reported. In 2025, one Brooklyn Democratic nominee dubbed Mayers “Supreme-maker” during her acceptance speech. Mayers, who reportedly represented four of the nine candidates selected that year, told Hell Gate that his work consisted of advising his candidates on interviews, events, and campaigning. 

The incident, along with a dizzying succession of other developments, set off a firestorm. A researcher at Anthropic quit, warning that artificial intelligence could cause human extinction this decade — a mainstream view among AI developers, even as they race to build the technology. Anthropic’s head of alignment concurred, and OpenAI’s chief scientist warned that humanity could soon lose control of its future. This weekend, both companies pledged to give independent monitors access to their systems, but neither has committed to slowing development.

Federal politicians vowed action. Lawmakers floated proposals from mandatory safety evaluations to a government-controlled kill switch. Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar unveiled a bill to pause frontier AI development and to permanently ban superintelligence. Overseas, dozens of UK lawmakers demanded a ban on superintelligence, and the UN human rights chief called for an “all-out effort” to reduce existential risk.

New York Focus will also interview Assemblymember Alex Bores and author Garrison Lovely at an event on AI policy on Thursday evening, September 17.

Get your ticket here.

So far, state and local politicians have been quieter. But safety regulations — like on cars, food, and factories — often begin in states, before Congress sets a national floor. Last year, New York passed one of the country’s first frontier AI safety laws. We spoke to Assemblymember Alex Bores, the author of that law, about how states should regulate the technology.

This interview was conducted on Saturday, September 12. It has been edited for length and clarity.

AM: Governor Kathy Hochul this week called on Washington to act against catastrophic AI risk, without proposing further action in New York. Before we get into specific policies, how do you think about the basic division of responsibility? Given the current federal political environment, what is the proper role for a state like New York in regulating the most advanced AI systems?

AB: The best solutions will be national and international, but the states have an incredibly important role. There’s this cliché that states are the laboratories of democracy, and I think it’s said so frequently that people forget the meaning of it. The federal government moves slowly. In 2023, it passed something like 27 laws total. States move much quicker. New York usually does about 700 laws a year, and unlike Congress, also repeals laws and edits laws quite frequently.

So the role of the states should be magnified in any technology that is moving very quickly, because we need to have multiple attempts at getting that policy correct. The ones that don’t work get repealed. The ones that do work become the frameworks that move nationally.

AM: I imagine your phone has been blowing up in the last couple of weeks. What are you hearing from people in New York politics?

AB: AI used to be thought of as a niche topic area that a few of us experts would work on. Now it’s a thing that everyone wants to work on, and rightfully so. We have crossed a mental boundary. This is going to have such a large impact that a lot of what we’re debating has moved beyond the technical and into values: Who decides? Who should have control? Who should be able to determine the direction of this technology, and where do we want it to go?

You’re seeing that reflected by a lot of my colleagues, who want to take action in this space and are thinking about specific bills that they want to carve out and work on.

AM: Hochul’s statement said New York already set the national standard for regulating AI. That refers to the Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act, which goes into effect in January. But the law is quite different from the bill that you initially introduced, which you’ve said was itself the result of many compromises with the industry.

In broad strokes, what will the RAISE Act do starting January? And what would the original bill have done?

AB: What it’ll do in January is require frontier AI developers that want to make their product available to New Yorkers to register with the state and pay money into a new government agency to regulate AI (which was a good addition from the governor). It requires them to have a safety plan that they make public with some room for redactions, and that they actually stick to that safety plan. And it requires them to disclose critical safety incidents to New York.

Now, critically, the definition of critical safety incidents is extremely watered down. The easiest way to think about this: by all reasonable interpretations, Hugging Face would have had to be disclosed in the original RAISE Act. In the law that’s coming into effect in January, it would not have to. Nor would the recent attack on the German wiki or the hack of Ruby Gems, which we just learned about last night, have to be disclosed — because the standard in the final bill is that disclosures are required if incidents caused an injury or death, or will imminently cause a serious injury or death.

Other parts that were left out are requiring third-party audits, which was dropped before the legislature passed the bill, and a ban on releasing models that fail a company’s own tests.

AM: Walk me through how the fight played out, from the original idea to the final version.

AB: The original version of the RAISE Act was drafted in August 2024. I borrowed a lot from SB 1047 in California, which had not yet been vetoed, but updated it. I sent it around to all of the major labs. I got red lines [edits to a legislative document]. I sent around a new version in December and got red lines back again.

Most of the red lines I disagreed with, but some helped clarify the bill or make it better, and I put those in the draft. I circulated it with others, including Attorney General Tish James’s office and outside advocates, and we introduced it in March.

[In May, lawmakers capped the bill’s penalties and advanced it out of committee. Bores said that was when the industry response escalated.]

They went from opposing it with their regional lobbyists, who have an incentive to maintain good relationships with their local legislators, to the national lobbyists, whose only incentive is to kill the bill.

It got a lot more aggressive. [Bores accused industry groups of using astroturf organizations and misleading arguments that the bill would hurt startups, even though it applied to only a handful of frontier AI companies.]

They started texting my constituents. That’s not usual for lobbying. Spending hundreds of thousands on lobbying, that’s usual. Doing campaign-style tactics is not.

It basically came down to the last week of session. What was put in front of me was that we had to give up two key components: third-party audits and whistleblower protections. So we made those changes.

Literally the last day of the Senate’s session, we get word that we’re going to pass the bill in both the Senate and the Assembly. 

It turns out Meta had planned to fly in some of their bigwigs into Albany on Friday because they thought the Senate would pass it but they’d have a few days to kill it in the Assembly. They got word that it was going to pass in the Assembly that day, and they said, “Will you hop on a Zoom to talk about it?” We get on a Zoom, and they say, “You’ve really moved the conversation forward. Why don’t you just pause, not do the bill? We can keep talking about it in the off session and really get it right, and we’ll do it next session.”

And I said, “Cool, are you going to pause AI training while we do this?” And that was the end of that conversation.

After that, I got a friendly call that told me, “Well, Zuck’s been briefed.” Which is a pretty direct way of saying we’re going to campaign against you, and we’re going to deploy a lot of resources.

[The bill nevertheless passed both chambers with bipartisan majorities. Meta did not respond to New York Focus’s request for comment.]

Meanwhile, Jerry Nadler announces his retirement in September, and I declare for Congress in October. [Leading the Future — a Super PAC network funded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman and the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, among others — named Bores its top target, pledged to spend at least $10 million against him, and ran ads attacking the RAISE Act.] That was trying to send a message to the governor that we’ll campaign against you if you take action here.

In December, we get the redlined draft back [from the governor’s office], and it’s largely copying SB 53 [California’s frontier AI law, signed that September].

That would have been useless. It’s not like a privacy bill, where if New York doesn’t have a privacy bill, we don’t really benefit from California’s rules. This is about training a frontier; you’re not doing that 50 different times in 50 different states, you’re doing it once.  So the standards that apply in California benefit everyone nationwide. Passing a bill that’s exactly the same as SB 53 is like being the 39th state to ratify a constitutional amendment. It does nothing new.

So that was unacceptable to us, and we pushed for a lot of places that we thought would be important to preserve.

[Among the provisions Bores fought to preserve was coverage of powerful models created through “knowledge distillation,” which could have brought Chinese models like DeepSeek under the law.] Largely, the labs were okay with that provision. Andreessen Horowitz was not. And, as crazy as this is to say, I heard from another company that does a lot of business in China that the Chinese Communist Party had been pressuring them to oppose the RAISE Act. It wasn’t explicitly because of this provision, but that was the subtext. Having audits that applied to Chinese models had gotten notice at some level of the Chinese government.

Unfortunately, the governor’s office insisted on that provision coming out.

There were others. The provision that companies couldn’t release a model that failed their own tests fell out. That was opposed by the labs as well. And the penalties were far, far reduced from what we had originally put forward.

But there were seven or eight places where we moved past SB 53. That included requiring disclosure within 72 hours of safety incidents, rather than 15 days. And we removed a provision that was in California’s law that said, effectively, that it can’t be held to best practices in the industry. We made sure that it was stronger — not leaps and bounds stronger, but it proved the point that SB 53 was not a ceiling, that states would continue to build upon each other.

Because what we saw right after SB 53 passed was that all of the companies that opposed it suddenly turned around and said, “This is the model. Everyone, copy this. Don’t go any further.”  They always want to set whatever the floor is now as the nationwide ceiling. They did that exact same thing with the RAISE Act.

AM: It is striking that OpenAI claimed this week that they supported the RAISE Act, when they lobbied hard to dial it back. What leverage do these companies have in New York politics? Does the governor’s team give deference to them because they’re persuaded by the arguments, or afraid of their political spending, or something else?

AB: [Bores declined to speculate about the governor’s motives and praised her team’s intentions.] What I will say is we had a bunch of conversations with the administration’s technical experts in between the bill passing the legislature and the start of the red lines, and those conversations were drastically different than the red lines.

AM: What was Anthropic’s role in the fight? The Super PAC linked to them supported your congressional campaign — how do you think about the role they’re playing in this conversation and political moment? 

AB: Anthropic has frequently opposed bills I’ve done. They officially took no position on the RAISE Act, whatever ‘officially’ means. But one of their co-founders, Jack Clark, tweeted a pretty brutal takedown right after we passed it in the legislature, and they, like everyone else, gave red lines. Towards the end, they were more supportive of moving beyond SB 53 than most of the others. Anthropic’s also given a bunch of critiques on my chatbot bill that I passed this year. So, you know, I think they’re one of the companies that operates in more good faith than others, but I think you should take every company’s thoughts and comments with a grain of salt.

AM: It’s really interesting to hear you talk about how the point of a state passing an additional safety regulation is to go beyond previous states, because you can only train a model once. What is the theoretical maximum of what a state can do — is it that companies could decide not to operate in that state? How far can a state go?

AB: If a very small state goes very far, you could see AI companies saying we’re not going to make our models available there. That’d be a really extreme action, and it’s certainly not an action any of them are going to take towards New York or California or Illinois or Massachusetts, and maybe that’s why those are the states that are really moving things forward.

But you know, stepping back from AI, anytime you say you’re going to regulate anything in tech, the industry responds with, “Well, we’re going to pull out. You’re going to lose all the jobs.” And 99 times out of 100, nothing comes to pass.

AM: Like other powerful industries, AI companies are increasingly offering their own ideas for regulation. Today, Anthropic and OpenAI both said that they will embed independent safety evaluators in their companies and give them employee-like access. And Anthropic called on the government to require all frontier companies to do the same. There is a lot of momentum right now. Are you worried that we will waste it on something too small? Do you have a red line on what needs to be in a safety bill for it to be worth passing?

AB: I haven’t thought of a specific red line. But I am very worried that we will waste this momentum. 

I am of the opinion you pass whatever you can when you can, and you keep working on it the next year. But there are others who say, “Well, we’ve done it. Let’s let that sit for a while.”

And so, I guess I would say the red line is — if whatever is passed is understood or portrayed as obviating the need for anything in January, then don’t agree to that this year. But if you can get a quick thing now through a Republican-controlled Congress and fight for even more next year in a Democratic-controlled Congress, I think that’s great.

But yes, the same way that much of the industry has fought against regulation, and then once it’s passed, said “this is the ceiling” — the cousin of that strategy is to try to seize this moment where people really want to pass something, but have the thing that’s passed not go any further or barely further than the states already have, and call that a win. And it’s even worse if you do that and preempt the states from taking more action, which was the recent leak on what the Ted Cruz draft might do. [US Senators Ted Cruz and Amy Klobuchar, among others, are reportedly working on legislation that would set up a voluntary safety regime and preempt some state AI laws.]

I think it’s going to be hopefully easier for Democrats to take action here, because so many of the mega-donors that are pushing against AI regulation are also the mega-donors to the Republican Party. [Bores cites Mark Andreessen and Elon Musk.]

It is the time to go bold right now.

AM: What does bold look like? What should New York in particular do right now?

AB: I reserve the right to change my answer in a month, because with the speed of development, it could be brand-new things. I’ll start by saying at the national level, I think what Sanders and Casar have put forward is the right scale. I haven’t reviewed the raw text yet, but that is approaching the level that we need. [Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas) announced a proposal to pause frontier AI development and to permanently ban the development of superintelligent AI.]

It’s very difficult to do that in New York, for one state to pause all AI development, because how does it reach and where it goes from there.

But the bare minimum I would want to see states advocating for would include: required third-party audits, not just relying on this being voluntary, and setting out what it is; required disclosure of all safety incidents, not just ones tied to catastrophic risk, including the sharing of the underlying data; and required monitoring of all AI that’s deployed.

[Bores called for mandatory, undeletable logs of high-risk AI use and minimum cybersecurity standards for “trusted access partner” programs giving access to dangerous models.]

All of this is just on the catastrophic risk front. There’s a much broader agenda on AI that still needs to be talked about in terms of surveillance, in terms of jobs.

AM: Transparency and disclosure requirements only work [on their own] if it’s possible to safely engineer AI. If you support the Sanders bill on the national level, what would happen if New York enacted it at the state level? You have said that you think it’s reasonable to think that there may be a 10 percent chance of this technology killing everyone. Should New York be thinking about how to just not build it?

AB: Perhaps. I am not a lawyer — the Sanders and Casar bill has the death penalty for companies, right? Can New York State do that? I don’t know. There’s some level where the interstate commerce clause comes into play. There’s some level in which there’d be a real pullout. Lawyers smarter than me could help you think about that trade-off.

But I don’t think it’s crazy to advocate. That would be something I’d want to think more about.

AM: I’m sure you’ve read or seen the book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. Do you think that’s true?

AB: There’s a split among people who advocate for AI safety on whether you believe AI alignment could be solved, whether you could safely build it at some point. We don’t have the science yet; I’m not asserting that definitely we could get there. But I don’t see any reason why physics would ban it.

And even when Jacob Coxon this week stepped down, the internal Slack messages that he sent said, “I hope to be working on superintelligence with all of you in the 2030s, once we can do it safely.” I believe, until it’s proven otherwise, that there’s probably a solution out there to build this safely. But I don’t think we’re anywhere on that path yet.

AM: As you mentioned, we’ve been talking about frontier AI risk, catastrophic risk. But the fiercest popular backlash against AI so far has centered on its physical infrastructure.

AB: I don’t know if that’s still true after this week, but certainly before this week, yeah.

AM: You’ve been more open to data centers than some critics, though you did support New York’s moratorium. If you want a public movement for frontier AI regulation, how do you connect it to what people are most angry about locally?

AB: I think it’s important to realize that all of the issues — whether it’s data centers and local impact, or child safety, or privacy and surveillance, or the jobs impact, or algorithmic discrimination, or deepfakes — all of them have overlapping but distinct advocates. And they all have the exact same enemies.

They all have Leading the Future. They all have Build American AI. They all have the most extreme parts of the industry. They want there to be no regulation whatsoever. And the lesson from passing the RAISE Act, and frankly from my [congressional] campaign, is that all of us need to be allies in the fight to give the American people a say in the development of this technology.

Too frequently, we Democrats like to be a circular firing squad. I’m not saying everyone has to agree with everything that everyone else is advocating for, but I do think we have to realize that people want a say, and there are so many questions here that are about control.

Part of the objection to data centers is the local water usage, electric usage, impact on development. But another part is — it’s the first say that anyone is getting on the development of AI. And you’ll see that AI data centers are far less popular than just data centers without AI attached. This is a call to government to make sure you’re addressing all of the issues that people have with AI, and not just the immediate ones that are coming up.

AM: Some skeptics argue that the worst-case AI scenarios are just marketing hype. They point out that many of the people who have long said they’re terrified of this technology went on to build it and get rich off of it. How do you think about that?

AB: I think people are right to have general skepticism of anything that comes from corporate marketing, and so I am quite sympathetic to that argument. And certainly, there have been security incidents that have happened, and then the marketing teams at each of these companies have tried to spin it, because that’s the role of a marketing team.

I think one of the reasons that Jacob Coxon resigning this week went so viral is because, in doing it, he gave up all of the options that had been granted but not vested at Anthropic. So clearly, it was costing him money to take this action, in a way that if the company itself says, “Oh, it’s really dangerous,” people worry that there’s a mixed motivation there.

AM: Others argue that strict rules would allow China to overtake the US. How should regulators address that concern?

AB: The CCP is far more terrified of AI than the West, and is imposing regulation far beyond much of what’s ever been discussed in the US, perhaps barring the last couple weeks. And they have a real incentive to maintain control; the CCP is far more controlling of China than the American government is of the US. They have a national standard where every AI project, before you even start training the model, has to pass an ethics review board. So regulation is not going to be the reason we win or lose versus China.

I would add that, to our conversation before about knowledge distillation, the advance of our AI models is speeding China up, because China is distilling them. If the US stopped, that would slow China down, not to zero, but substantially. Safety and winning the race with China are not actually opposites. In many cases, they go together.

Usually, those arguments are made by people who are against export controls. I think if you’re really worried about the race with China, it’s a no-brainer to say we should be reducing the advanced chips that are going to China. That is actually going to have far more of an effect on whether we win there in China or not than how we regulate here in the US.

You don’t even necessarily need a deal to have both be taking actions that slow things down, as long as you’re showing real, credible, and verifiable facts and movement. But we should try to strike a deal, and it’s much more possible than people give it credit for. All of the arguments that it’s impossible are rejected by fairly recent examples in international negotiations. 

[Bores went on to cite nuclear weapons, missile-factory X-rays, recombinant DNA, CFCs, blinding lasers, and germline editing as cases in which global coordination or technological restraint were achieved despite widespread skepticism.]

I’m not in any way saying this is easy and you can flip a switch, but the people who are saying it’s impossible have been proven wrong dozens of times.

Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany — three of which are headed by progressive mayors elected last November — are reshaping their streets to make cycling less dangerous and more practical. In the past two years, three of the cities joined Vision Zero, a campaign that aims to reduce and eventually eliminate traffic deaths. And in the past few years, all four cities dramatically increased the pace of bike infrastructure projects, a New York Focus analysis of announcements on their government websites found.

A large part of the state’s plan to reduce emissions relies on drastically cutting down on car usage. Bikes, including e-bikes, can be an attractive alternative to cars — if residents feel safe enough to ride them.

The early days of the Covid pandemic sparked renewed interest in two-wheelers across the country. Bike sales boomed across the state as people looked for ways to get some exercise while socially distancing. Yet many newfound cyclists soon discovered the lack of safe places to ride around their cities, and crashes involving bikers have ticked up in the years since.

While redesigning streets and building permanent safety improvements can be a yearslong process, advocates are optimistic that the wheels are in motion for safer streets.

“For those four cities, it’s absolutely a high-water mark,” said Jon Orcutt, advocacy director at the cycling education nonprofit Bike New York and former policy director at the New York City Department of Transportation. 

“There was almost no conversation going back five or 10 years ago, or it was still at that advocacy-led stage instead of government-led. Advocacy is great, but it doesn’t get you infrastructure. You need government to lead on this stuff.”

Buffalo

Under recently elected Mayor Sean Ryan, an avid cyclist, Buffalo has begun redesigning public spaces and improving bike lanes. Bike advocates hailed Ryan’s appointment of Justin Booth, former leader of the advocacy organization GObike Buffalo, as the city’s parking commissioner, a key role in streets and transportation policy.

“It makes a big difference to have somebody who’s really watching what’s going on in city hall and inside the agencies, while offering a perspective that’s different from what’s traditionally existed inside government,” Orcutt said.

In late July, Ryan announced a plan to transform Niagara Square, the area in front of Buffalo City Hall, from an unwieldy roundabout into a bike-accessible public space. And in May, his administration broke ground on a $70 million overhaul of a stretch of the city’s Main Street after years of planning — including significant improvements for bikers.

“There will be dedicated protected bike lanes at the sidewalk level, which will be a first for the City of Buffalo,” Booth told New York Focus.

“There’s going to be a lot more stuff coming down the line,” Booth added.

Not everyone in Buffalo is thrilled with the bike-friendly agenda. After Booth warned police not to park their squad cars in the square illegally, the city’s police union called for his dismissal, according to the Investigative Post. The union’s vice president reportedly took issue with GObike Buffalo’s “anti-vehicle agenda” and association with “radical groups,” including Buffalo World Naked Bike Ride, an organization that runs an annual clothing-optional protest against car dependency.

But recent years have seen more grassroots excitement for cycling in Buffalo. One sign of the changing tide: “bike buses” — a mode of transit sweeping across the state, in which groups of parents defensively bike around their children as they head to and from school — have become very popular in the city.

“These bike buses are the revolution that our city and region, as well as the country, is going through,” said Kevin Heffernan, interim executive director of GObike Buffalo, which helps coordinate the groups. “Once these children get hooked on biking to school, and it’s their favorite day of the week, they’re not just gonna be like, ‘I grew out of it now.’”

Rochester

Seventy-five miles east of the Queen City, Rochester became one of the first upstate cities to join Vision Zero.

Mayor Malik Evans committed in 2024 to the program, which involves identifying streets with the most injuries and deaths and using the data to implement strategies like road diets, protected bike lanes, and lower speed limits. (New York City embarked on the initiative in 2014.)

As part of its Vision Zero plan, Rochester is working on a host of safety measures, including lowering the speed limit on residential streets from 30 to 25 miles per hour. The city is also considering reintroducing cameras — after removing them a decade ago — to crack down on drivers who violate speed limits and run red lights.

The city received $24 million in 2024 from the federal Department of Transportation for its Safe Streets and Roads for All program, which is building protected bike lanes and seeking ways to better maintain roadways in the winter. That’s no small feat, given Rochester is one of the snowiest cities in the country.

The federal grant money has helped the city fund several major bike safety improvement projects, such as an effort to accelerate a planned 63-mile “bike spine” network of connected bike lanes.

Darin Ramsay, a transportation specialist for the Rochester government, said the city is upgrading or planning improvements for many streets in the network, such as North Clinton Avenue, Lexington Avenue, Chili Avenue, and parts of East Main Street, Culver Road, University Avenue, and Genesee Street.

“The direction of bike infrastructure has been overall very positive,” said Cody Donahue, co-executive director of the transportation and cycling advocacy group Reconnect Rochester. “We’re building more. We’re connecting more.”

Syracuse

Syracuse signed onto Vision Zero late last year under former Mayor Ben Walsh, leaving the plan’s implementation to the newly elected Mayor Sharon Owens, who served as Walsh’s second-in-command.

In February, Owens appointed a Vision Zero coordinator and created a new city position, a transportation and mobility director, to centralize street safety and cycling efforts.

Syracuse first released a bike plan in 2012, but the city completed only a small portion of the envisioned network. Now, the city is starting to make steady progress, according to Alex Lawson, a member of Syracuse’s Moving People Transportation Coalition, a transportation-focused community group.

“There’s been real progress over the last 10 years,” said Lawson. “Syracuse didn’t used to have any dedicated bike infrastructure, but a few major projects have created the start of what you’d need for a citywide network.”

This year, the city is making over 100 city blocks safer for cyclists through a mix of painted bike lanes, pavement markings, and traffic-calming measures. Also, as part of the ongoing removal of I-81’s downtown section, the state government is building dedicated bike lanes along the route of the defunct highway.

Lawson pointed to James Street as an illustrative example of how Syracuse has changed. A few years ago, after a driver hit a friend of Lawson’s while biking on the street, the friend decided to stop biking and bought a car to get around instead. Incensed, Lawson reached out to the mayor’s office about James Street’s danger to bikers.

“They were sympathetic,” Lawson said about the city employee who responded to him. “But then they pointed to their ‘bike suitability map’ — which rates every street’s suitability for biking based on traffic data — and told me James Street just isn’t very safe to bike on, so maybe I should suggest an alternative route to my friend.”

Lawson said he was delighted to hear that the city government is working on a plan to improve the street.

“I’m glad to see the shift from ‘don’t bike on that road’ to ‘how do we make it safer,’” he said.

Albany

The state’s capital has seen new biking improvements, too.

Albany’s bike advocates have a street safety ally in Mayor Dorcey Applyrs, who took office at the start of the year. Applyrs successfully pushed to lower the residential speed limit to 25 mph as a city councilmember. Last year, she wrote an opinion piece advocating for cameras and road-calming infrastructure to rein in speeding drivers, especially in school zones.

Albany joined Vision Zero in 2024 under former Mayor Kathy Sheehan as part of the broader Capital Region Vision Zero plan, which includes nearby cities such as Troy. (Sheehan, who served from 2014 to 2025, supported several bike safety measures during her tenure.)

The county government has joined in on the push for cycling safety. In March, the Albany County Legislature enacted a law requiring drivers to give a three-foot berth to bikers when passing them. In May, the county legislature pledged its support to implementing the region’s Vision Zero plan.

Local bike boosters are optimistic about Albany’s progress. James Rath, the executive director of Capital Streets, an organization that advocates for safer streets, highlighted improvements to Washington Park and the addition of a shared-use path on the new Livingston Avenue Bridge under construction. The new route will span the Hudson River, connecting the Empire State Trail and the Albany Skyway to neighboring Rensselaer.

“That’s going to be a crucial connection for people crossing the Hudson to get to Rensselaer,” said Rath.

Founded three years ago, Capital Streets is learning a lot from its more experienced counterparts in other upstate cities.

“GOBike Buffalo has really inspired us, and we’ve been working closely with Reconnect Rochester over the past three years,” Rath said. “It’s helpful to learn from one another, share successes and lessons learned, and also just have solidarity that there’s a movement for this across New York State.”

Albany sits at the eastern terminus of the original Erie Canal and its Erie Canalway Trail. According to Rath, many commuters bike on the trails surrounding the city, weaving their way through the constellation of municipalities around the capital.

The Erie Canalway Trail

Stretching more than 350 miles from the Hudson River to Lake Erie, the Erie Canal wends its way across the Empire State. Opening in 1825, the canal became a lifeblood of American trade, playing a pivotal role in the development of Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo.

Today, though the Erie Canal is no longer the quintessential commercial artery of its golden days, the waterway still connects New York’s major upstate cities. In late 2020, the state completed the 750-mile Empire State Trail network, a long segment of which runs along the original canal’s path. The trail now sees nearly 10 million visits a year.

In addition to making streets more accessible to bikes, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo have promoted their proximity to the trail, which has proven to be a boon for tourism and a hit among hardcore bikers.

“The Canalway Trail and the Empire State Trail is the spine across the state,” Ben Walsh, director of the New York State Canal Corporation and former Syracuse mayor, told New York Focus. “We’re seeing communities all along it build upon it. Really, it’s about connecting the dots.”

For example, Buffalo is building a new waterfront recreation space “which will be a significant connection among the Empire State Trail,” according to Booth.

Paul Steely White, the executive director of Parks & Trails New York, a nonprofit that seeks to improve access to outdoor recreation, said many parts of the trail could also be improved to avoid crossing over roadways.

“There’s a couple hundred miles of those [gaps] in the Empire State Trail alone that need to be bridged,” he said.

The trail also provides a controlled environment for less experienced bikers, White said.

“We used to have a word for bicyclists who would go to the street grid from the greenway: greenway graduates,” he said. “We’re seeking to create that same sort of safety experience on the street.”