This was a fun year. I got ejected from a Governor Kathy Hochul event, used the Freedom of Information Law to learn what hackers stole from the state government, and found that the view of the Hudson along the Penn Station to Albany Amtrak line still hasn’t gotten old.

I covered topics ranging from how the state is failing to address its housing crisis to accounting trickery that could net the state government $4 billion from Washington DC.

Thinking over my favorite reporting from this year, three themes emerged that seem key to understanding New York in 2024.

When I started at New York Focus just over a year ago, I was new to New York state government and the many opaque institutions and processes that comprise it.

Luckily, it’s my job to ask questions. I’ve learned a lot this year and hopefully taught you something as well, but I’m always going to approach this job with a beginner’s mind.

I’ve been covering New York government and politics since David Paterson occupied the Capitol’s second floor. Still, in 2024, this beat continued to challenge and surprise me. Even familiar topics brought new twists.

I’ve written a lot about ethical conflicts of interest in Albany, but I’d never really written a story about a lawmaker’s romantic relationship. That changed in March, when I reported that Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie was dating a woman who extensively lobbied his chamber.

In many ways, 2024 is ending as it began in the world of New York climate politics.

The state still does not have a dedicated source of climate funding. The potentially sweeping, economy-wide carbon pricing system known as “cap and invest” has yet to see the light of day, as regulators continue to hash out the program’s details behind the scenes.

The law governing the state’s utilities is still at odds with the climate law, after a major bill known as the NY HEAT Act failed to pass the legislature for the second time, despite Governor Kathy Hochul endorsing its core tenets.

And the state’s share of renewable energy — central to meeting its wider climate mandates — has barely budged, as the industry continues to recover from the inflation and supply chain shocks that led to dozens of project cancellations last year.

That isn’t to say I didn’t have a lot to write about over the past year.

For the first time under Governor Kathy Hochul, criminal justice was not a dominating feature of New York state legislative news this year. After three years of Hochul demanding rollbacks to landmark 2019 reforms — particularly bail reform — the governor and the legislature seemed content with tinkering at the margins of the state’s criminal laws.

Policy aside, the staff and contributors who bring you New York Focus’s criminal justice coverage focused our efforts on government agencies. Through our investigations into those institutions — namely jails and police — one thing became clearer than ever: Barely anyone in power is watching them.

This is my first year as a reporter working the education beat. I’ve learned a lot in the last nine months — not least of which is how incredibly complex and multifaceted the education system is in both New York state and across the country.

Education funding makes up about a third of the overall state budget. We also spend, on average, more per pupil than any other state. And New York City is the largest school district in the country, with nearly one million students. The state also has a large population of students who need special services, like those who have disabilities or those who are English Language Learners.

There’s a lot going on and a lot to cover.