On a February morning in 2024, a little-known agency in Rockland County held a public hearing on a proposed subsidy for the expansion of a JPMorganChase data center in Orangeburg, near the New Jersey border. In return for nearly $77 million in tax breaks, the project promised to create exactly one permanent job.

No one showed up. After 20 minutes of silence, an agency official called the meeting to a close. Two weeks later, the subsidy deal was approved.

The kind of tax breaks JPMorganChase received, doled out by local agencies called industrial development agencies, were designed first and foremost to attract companies that bring steady jobs. Data centers — which require major investment but few workers — call that premise into question.

A citizen oversight panel is pressuring the state to improve conditions in its youth prisons in response to New York Focus reporting on a yearslong crisis in the facilities.

THE CITY’s report comes as the state legislature is in final deliberations over the New York for All Act, a bill that would limit cooperation between local police departments and federal immigration authorities, except in certain circumstances.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration has been in talks with Governor Kathy Hochul’s office about trimming the costs of three expensive programs as part of a potential deal to send more state aid to the city, according to several people familiar with the ongoing negotiations.

Legal experts who spoke with New York Focus called Sepúlveda’s record “professional negligence,” and said it could lead to disbarment or lawsuits from clients.