New York has become one of the slowest states in the country to pay unemployment benefits.

Only six states have been slower to start sending unemployment checks this year, according to federal Labor Department data. The agency considers a payment timely if someone receives it within 21 days of filing a claim.

New York paid 64 percent of eligible people within that time frame in the first half of this year — far below the 87 percent benchmark that the federal government considers “acceptable.”

Several unemployed New Yorkers who spoke to New York Focus described having to rely on savings or family members to pay bills while they waited weeks or months for their benefit.

“Workers have bills to pay,” said Amy Traub, a senior researcher with the National Employment Law Project who focuses on unemployment insurance. “Their landlord isn’t interested in a story about how their unemployment check is late.”

Will New York follow its climate law, once hailed as one of the most ambitious in the world? Or will it be allowed to keep stalling on its legal obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions?

That may be up to an Ulster County judge, who on Friday will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit brought by four environmental and climate justice groups over the state’s failure to act on one of the core mandates of the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.

The lawsuit comes after Governor Kathy Hochul in January slammed the brakes on what was expected to be her signature policy to implement the law: cap and invest.

The program would charge polluters for their carbon emissions and put the proceeds toward the clean energy transition. It was designed to meet one of the climate law’s key requirements, namely that the state issue regulations to achieve steep emissions cuts over the next several decades.

Those rules were supposed to be in place by 2024, a deadline the state blew past. The Hochul administration was finally gearing up to unveil the rules at the start of this year — but instead reversed course over concerns that the carbon pricing program would drive up everyday costs for New Yorkers.

Hochul promised at the time that she was just pressing pause. “We have to get this right,” she told reporters at the time. “Because I believe that other states will be looking at us as a model as well.”

As the year has gone on, though, Hochul’s administration has backed further away from the policy. A draft of the new state energy plan, released Wednesday, mentions it only in passing, as an option the state should “continue to evaluate.”

Top lawmakers don’t seem to be in a rush to figure out how to handle impending federal cuts.

On July 4, President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law, enacting over $1 trillion in historic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and forcing states like New York to rethink their largest and oldest safety net programs.

So far, neither top legislators nor Governor Kathy Hochul have laid out a clear vision for what comes next. New York Focus spoke to fiscal advocates to get their take on how the state should move forward.

A rooftop solar company with a vexed history could soon be out of business in New York.

On Tuesday, utility regulators moved to strip Attyx, formerly known as SUNco, of its license to operate in the state unless it can prove within 30 days why it should be allowed to stay in business.

Regulators accused the company of “misleading or deceptive” marketing that led homeowners to sign up for solar under the false pretext that they would get their roofs replaced for free, thanks to generous government incentives.

Tuesday’s order from the Public Service Commission, the seven-member panel that regulates New York energy companies, said the state had received numerous customer complaints about Attyx’s practices.

In February, thousands of New York state prison guards walked off their jobs. With no officers to watch over daily operations, officials locked incarcerated people in their cells for days at a time. Governor Kathy Hochul deployed 6,000 National Guard troops, who assisted skeleton crews in trying to keep more than 30,000 prisoners fed and showered. At least seven incarcerated people died amid the chaos.

The wildcat strike ended after three weeks. Yet four months later, thousands of officer positions remain unfilled, and the state prison agency has struggled to resume normal operations, recent court records show.

Two health care companies are positioned to keep tens of millions of dollars that are meant to benefit the army of low-wage home health aides who care for disabled and elderly New Yorkers.

The first company, Public Partnerships, LLC (PPL), recently took over New York’s state-funded home health program. The second, health insurer Leading Edge Administrators, was hired by PPL to provide insurance and other benefits to the hundreds of thousands of workers — mostly women and immigrants — who provide the home care. The new coverage began in May.

A New York Focus investigation has found that Leading Edge has championed a business model allowing the employers they work with to keep money that should legally go to their workers.

Governor Kathy Hochul has made energy affordability a centerpiece of her political platform this year, blasting proposed utility rate hikes and even promising to “slow down” implementation of the state’s climate law over the concern that the clean energy transition is costing New Yorkers too much.

But Hochul’s administration is slashing an energy affordability program that was once a priority for the governor, New York Focus has learned.

The Empower+ program was designed specifically to help low- and moderate-income households “save energy and money” through energy efficiency upgrades. Since 2023 — at Hochul’s initiative — it has been New York’s one-stop shop to help residents take advantage of green building upgrades they might not otherwise be able to afford, like better insulation and replacing old boilers.

After Jane Havens learned about the severe job layoffs planned for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, she immediately reached out to her congressperson.

As the manager of Calamity Jane’s Firearms and Fine Shoes in Hudson Falls, Havens wanted to tell Representative Elise Stefanik that she opposed the US Justice Department’s firing of all of its trained ATF inspectors as part of President Donald Trump’s budget-cutting agenda.

Writing on behalf of her family, which operated a John Deere dealership for 35 years before opening its Washington County gun shop in 2016, Havens told Stefanik, “This does not help us or the industry. We do not support this,” and asked for her concerns to be forwarded to the DOJ.

Since its inception more than 50 years ago, the ATF has enforced federal laws relating to the sale, possession, and transportation of firearms in the US. Though the agency has been consistently underfunded, it has been able to monitor about 4.5 percent of licensed gun dealers throughout the country — but that may soon change.

Now, the ATF’s budget will be slashed by more than a quarter, or $418 million, pending congressional approval this fall. As part of that reduction, 541 of the ATF’s more than 800 industry investigators — who ensure compliance among licensed dealers by inspecting their records and inventories and looking for evidence of trafficking — will lose their jobs.

The move will decrease the ATF's “capacity to regulate the firearms and explosives industries by approximately 40%,” according to the DOJ’s 2026 budget summary.