Tensions are still simmering among state lawmakers and advocates after the Assembly closed its 2025 session last week without passing any of this year’s flagship climate and environmental bills.

Legislators shelved measures to cut packaging waste,; transition homes off fossil fuels, and ban toxic “forever chemicals” from everyday products. Each measure had passed the Senate, and an Assembly vote was the final hurdle. But most of them never came to a vote.

A fierce blame game has ensued.

It’s been a century since a state legislator last became mayor of New York City.

In 1925, state Senator Jimmy Walker triumphed over incumbent John Hylan to become New York City’s 97th mayor. In 1932, he was forced out of office by then-New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt after accepting numerous bribes from businessmen seeking city contracts.

One hundred years later, 33-year old state Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani upended New York politics by soundly defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor. Though he will face several candidates in the general election in November, including incumbent Mayor Eric Adams running as an independent, Mamdani is favored to win and take office as mayor on January 1.

To enact his ambitious agenda to make the city more affordable, he’d need to strike a better relationship with his former colleagues in Albany than Walker did.

Jasmine Stradford sat on her porch near Binghamton, New York, with toys, furniture, garbage bags full of clothing and other possessions piled up around her. She and her partner were being evicted after falling behind on rent.

So last June, they and their children — then ages 3, 12 and 15 — turned to New York’s emergency shelter system for help. It was built to provide homeless residents not only beds, but also food, help finding permanent housing and sometimes child care so parents can find work, attend school or look for apartments.

Stradford and her family received almost none of that. Instead of placing them in a shelter, the Broome County Department of Social Services cycled them through four roadside hotels over three months, where they mostly had to fend for themselves.

“I remember staring at my kids, thinking that I’d failed them,” Stradford said. “Then I remember going to DSS and being completely dehumanized.”

Stradford’s family was part of a growing trend: In the past few years, hotels have quietly become the state’s predominant response to homelessness outside New York City. New York Focus and ProPublica found that the state’s social services agencies placed just under half the 34,000 individuals and families receiving emergency shelter outside the city in fiscal year 2024 in hotels — up from 29% in 2018. The change was most pronounced in Broome County, where hotel cases more than quintupled.

Statewide spending on hotels more than tripled over that period to $110 million, according to an analysis of state temporary housing data by the news organizations. In total, hotels outside New York City were paid about $420 million to shelter unhoused people from April 2017 to September 2024.

In the past year, New York’s top financial officer has urged at least three private equity firms responsible for investing billions of state pension dollars to stop anti-union activities among their portfolio companies, according to records obtained by New York Focus.