Andrew Cuomo has centered his mayoral campaign on affordability, arguing that his experience in government has equipped him to bring down the cost of living in New York City.

His campaign cites as examples his achievements as governor, like raising the minimum wage and slashing taxes.

But the result of one affordability-centered episode from his time as New York’s attorney general has never received public attention: his pledge to protect 100,000 New Yorkers who had been victimized by shady debt collectors.

In July 2009, he launched a lawsuit on behalf of a judge to recover up to $550 million from collection firms that, he alleged, had violated basic due process rights by filing lawsuits against consumers without legally notifying them.

Cuomo called his lawsuit a “key step in our efforts to uproot unlawful debt collection practices.” He asked a judge to toss out the faulty cases and direct “proper restitution” to any debtor who made payment on an “improperly obtained default judgement.” His office estimated that the average default judgement was around $5,500.

In the end, very few of the cases were tossed out, and even fewer consumers got their money back.

Carolyn Coffey, a career consumers’ rights attorney, remembered praising Cuomo at the time for taking action against the “devastating effects” of fraudulent debt collection and sewer service.

But when his office unveiled the settlement, Coffey was “absolutely horrified,” she told New York Focus.

“It was a complete pass” for the debt collectors Cuomo had promised to hold accountable, she said.

Related: Have You Been Sued for Credit Card Debt? Your Fake Relative Might Know.

The New York Assembly closed the legislative session late Tuesday night without passing the year’s most closely watched environmental bill: a measure to reduce plastic pollution by holding companies responsible for the packaging waste they generate.

The fight over the packaging reduction bill continued until the final hours of the session, assemblymembers told New York Focus, but Speaker Carl Heastie ultimately declined to bring it to the floor for a vote — despite saying he supports it himself. A spokesperson for the speaker suggested that the bill did not have the votes to pass, though a majority of lawmakers in the chamber had signed onto it.

In the end, it may have come down to a cluster of reticent lawmakers who indicated that they were prepared to vote for the bill if it came to the floor — but hoped it wouldn’t.

Related: As Albany Debates Plastics Crackdown, Industry Pushes Softer Alternative

Diagnosed with a terminal heart condition, Sierra Johnson sometimes spends weeks at a time in the hospital. But she’s determined to not let her health get in the way of her lawsuit against the state of New York.

The 36-year-old Native American resident of the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne sued the state in 2023, alleging that four of its employees sexually assaulted her while she was incarcerated in two state prisons in 2014 and 2017.

At the end of May, Johnson spoke with Hell Gate and New York Focus from her hospital bed at the University of Vermont Medical Center, where she was recovering from a two-week stint in intensive care after suffering a severe heart attack and cardiogenic shock. Doctors have diagnosed her with end-stage heart failure, and have twice told her that she has days to live. Johnson, who has a teenage daughter, said she intends to spend the time she has left making state prisons safer for the women who will be held in them in the future.

“It’s not just about me. If it was, I would have just ate it,” she said. “But I don’t know if I’m gonna make it through this year. And no matter what, when it comes to the treatment of inmates, we should be treated as human beings.”

Johnson filed her lawsuit under the Adult Survivors Act, which in 2022 temporarily allowed sexual assault survivors to file complaints outside of the typical statute of limitations. She’s one of nearly 1,600 women who have filed claims against the state of New York alleging they were sexually abused by prison staff, according to a Hell Gate and New York Focus analysis. Collectively, the complaints paint a damning portrait of a longstanding, systemic pattern of sexual abuse in the state prison system, according to the women’s attorneys.

The New York state government is sitting on $20 billion of the public’s money, and an upstart challenger wants to give it all back.

Banks, insurers, and other companies often owe money to customers from inactive accounts, uncashed checks, security deposits, and other sources. If they don’t return it directly, they eventually have to hand it over to the state comptroller’s office, which takes over the job of getting the money back to its rightful owners.

Yet the mountain of cash keeps growing, and the governor and legislature routinely spend huge sums from the pot with little expectation of repaying it. Last fiscal year, lawmakers treated nearly $900 million in unclaimed funds as revenue to spend however they saw fit.

If the bill suddenly became due, it could blow a massive hole in the New York state budget.

And a recently declared comptroller candidate would take steps towards doing just that.

There’s a good chance that the New York State Comptroller is holding onto your money.

The comptroller’s office manages a giant pot of funds — about $20 billion — that businesses turned over to the state from sources like dormant bank accounts, uncashed checks, and unreturned security deposits. As I recently reported, New York state has essentially borrowed most of this money — and spent it.

But it’s very easy to see if a part of the $20 billion is yours.