Climate advocates and home energy contractors rallied outside the Albany offices of the state energy authority NYSERDA on Wednesday, pressing Governor Kathy Hochul’s administration to shore up funding for a key energy affordability program.

The Empower+ program, which helps low- and moderate-income households pay for energy efficiency upgrades they otherwise could not afford, is set to lose more than half its funding by 2027, as first reported by New York Focus in July. The program has already begun scaling back, after supporting more than 40,000 home upgrades over the last couple of years.

A longtime state ethics commissioner is planning to sue New York’s ethics commission after his nomination to join a new iteration of the body was rejected.

Syracuse lawyer Gary Lavine served as a commissioner on the Joint Commission on Public Ethics (JCOPE) for a decade, where he ruffled feathers as he pushed for the commission to become more transparent and criticized then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s influence over the body.

As Governor Kathy Hochul publicly touts her support for universal child care, her office told New York Focus that it has privately convened a coalition to help find a way to pay for it. That comes as news to many of the lawmakers, unions, advocacy organizations, and provider groups most active on the issue.

In January, Hochul proposed creating a coalition to “identify a responsible and sustainable path” to fund universal child care. The state budget passed in May allocated $1 million to set up the group, which the governor said would include fiscal experts and business, labor, and child care provider representatives. Legislators hoped its work would inform Hochul’s next budget proposal.

Four legislators who sponsor child care bills and numerous child care advocacy groups told New York Focus they were under the impression that the coalition had not yet been formed.

“Has this coalition even met yet? Have we identified who is on it? Those kinds of things I would love to know,” said Assemblymember Sarah Clark of Rochester, who sponsors a bill to fund child care with a payroll tax on employers.

When Kathy Hochul took over as governor in 2021, she promised a more transparent, more responsive state government. In her first major speech as chief executive, she vowed to usher in a “new era of transparency,” including by facilitating an “expedited process” to more promptly fulfill public records requests under the state’s Freedom of Information Law.

It was a niche topic for a debut speech, but important for government accountability: FOIL, which allows members of the public to request unpublished records from state and local government agencies, is one the main ways that journalists, advocates, and other watchdogs ensure that New York officials don’t evade public scrutiny. Each state has a version of the law, but New York is among the slowest to fulfill requests.

Four years later, Hochul has pursued some transparency initiatives, — but still hasn’t come through on her promise to expedite New York’s notoriously slow FOIL system. This year, the state legislature tried to pick up the slack, passing a bill that would tighten the deadlines that agencies must meet in responding to FOIL requests — but this month, Hochul vetoed it.