An anti-development New York City Councilmember approved a project in her district rather than risk being overruled by a new appeals board — the first sign of a potential sea change in the city’s housing landscape caused by the ballot questions that voters approved in November.

Vickie Paladino, a firebrand Republican who has railed against past efforts to increase housing density, announced Sunday that she would support a rezoning to build an eight-story building in Bay Terrace, Queens with 248 apartments.

In a six-minute Facebook video, Paladino noted that her opposition could have been enough to kill the project in the past when the council generally deferred to members on projects in their districts. But that changed with the passage of Question 4, which created a three-person appeals board including the mayor, council speaker, and local borough president, with the power to overturn the council’s rejections.

The top investigator at New York’s horse racing regulator has resigned after a New York Focus investigation last month revealed that the agency spent years ignoring key evidence in a massive horse doping scandal.

The former director of racing investigations, Andrew Rakowsky, “resigned in lieu of termination,” New York Gaming Commission spokesperson Lee Park told New York Focus.

Rakowsky could not be reached for comment. His government phone line was disconnected as of publication time.

Beverly Footman wants to forget the three prison staffers who she says abused her while she was incarcerated — but they haunt her. One was a cook at Groveland Correctional Facility, where she was locked up in the early 1990s. Around three times a week for over a year, he would corner her in the walk-in refrigerator and other parts of the kitchen, where she worked, and force her to have sex with him, Footman alleges. She only knew him by his last name: Fitzpatrick.

Footman didn’t report Fitzpatrick while she was in prison. He called her degrading and racist names and told her “bad things” would happen if she made trouble, she recalled. She believed him. Staff covered for one another’s abuse, she told New York Focus.

“If you tell them something, they say you’re lying,” Footman said. “Everything you do is a lie.”

Decades after her alleged abuse, Footman got her chance to push for some accountability. In 2023, she sued the state under the Adult Survivors Act, a law that opened a yearlong window for sexual assault victims to file civil lawsuits outside the normal statutes of limitations.

But last November, state Attorney General Letitia James’s office, which is defending the state against Adult Survivors Act suits, asked a judge to toss the case — among the first of hundreds of dismissals the state has planned to request. One of the state’s central arguments: A search conducted by the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, the prison agency, turned up no record of anyone named Fitzpatrick ever working at Groveland prison.

New York Focus conducted its own search — and quickly found a former employee matching Footman’s descriptions.