New York became the first state in the nation to set up a workers’ compensation system in the wake of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. In the century since, the social insurance program has covered medical bills and cash for recovery time for countless injured construction workers, prison guards, nurses, and other workers.

Yet in recent years, the program’s benefits have quietly shrunk by over a third.

The decline doesn’t correspond to jobs getting safer. Payouts have decreased even in years in which injury rates have gone up.

On Monday, New York Focus reported that banking giant JPMorganChase received a $77 million tax break from Rockland County’s industrial development agency, or IDA, for a data center project that will create just one permanent job. The deal, approved in 2024, is the largest per-job subsidy of its kind in the country. JPMorganChase did not respond to New York Focus’s questions.

To learn more, senior reporter Sam Mellins interviewed John Kaehny, executive director of the good government group Reinvent Albany, whose analysis surfaced the deal. They discussed what’s new about this kind of subsidy, what it means for taxpayers, and how agreements like this continue to fly under the radar despite calls for reform.

The prospect of waiting out the legal process while incarcerated, combined with the decreasing likelihood of winning their cases under new Trump administration policies, is pushing detained people — including some who fled violence or persecution in their home countries — to ask the government to allow them to leave.

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.