Over the past two and a half years, Mayor Eric Adams’ administration has spent tens of millions of dollars building an online tool it says will transform all social services in New York City.

The project, called MyCity, began with a splashy announcement — and then proceeded largely in secrecy, using an army of dozens of private contractors and resisting attempts at oversight. The project has no public roadmap for buildout or completion, a runaway budget, and a trail of missed deadlines. Its most-touted functionality so far is a child care subsidy portal — but child care providers and advocates have told New York Focus and testified to the City Council that it mostly hasn’t been helpful. And as money for MyCity continues to pour in, funding for the vouchers themselves is set to dry up.

It is never a good time to lose your job — but now may be an especially bad time to get laid off in New York.

That’s because the state’s unemployment benefit has been frozen for six years, so the maximum weekly payment is $504. That’s less than a full-time salary at the state’s minimum wage, and also lower than the benefit in neighboring Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania.

Albany’s biggest battle of the year started in earnest last week, when the state Assembly and Senate released their counters to Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal. At stake: how the state will spend more than $250 billion, determining everything from funding for schools to oversight of prisons, the taxes paid by millionaires to the wages paid to caregivers.

Reeling from plunging turnout for the Democratic Party in last year’s elections, New York’s leaders vowed to give voters more reason to believe that the one-party state government can deliver for them. “The days of incrementalism are over,” said a top Senate leader. “I’d like to see more dedication to solving problems holistically than just like, ‘Well, let’s do 10 percent of it now and see if we can do more next year.’ That kind of stuff is what people don’t like about government.”

Do this year’s budget proposals meet that bar? You be the judge.