A key fund that pays for New York City employees’ health benefits has run dry, opening up a $600 million hole in the city budget and threatening potential cuts to public workers’ health benefits.

For years, a cash pot known as the Health Insurance Stabilization Fund has been used to pay some health insurance premiums for city workers and offer supplemental health benefits like coverage for prescription drugs, dental, and vision plans.

But that fund’s balance has been declining for years and hit zero in October 2024, according to the Feb. 25, 2025, meeting minutes of the executive board of a major city workers’ union, DC37, which were obtained by New York Focus.

So far, that hasn’t threatened the roughly 960,000 city workers, under 65-retirees, and their dependents who rely on the health care and benefits. That’s because the city has been picking up the tab. 

That responsibility could soon change.

Seven years after a massive flood forced the St. Regis Mohawk elementary school to evacuate and sparked a community effort to build a new facility, that initiative may now have to wait.

The aging building, located on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation along the US-Canada border, has fallen into disrepair. The school, where 90 percent of students are Native American, also sits steps away from the St. Regis River, putting it at risk of seasonal flooding.

The school’s community has sought state funding to construct an entirely new building for years, and the New York state Education Department has supported that request — with Commissioner Betty Rosa visiting the school in 2023.

This year, the state Board of Regents’ budget request included increased funding for the three state-owned Indigenous schools: $10.6 million for the Tuscarora Nation School, $46.3 million for the Onondaga Nation School, and $110 million for a new building for the St. Regis Mohawk Nation.

However, in her January budget proposal, Governor Kathy Hochul allocated only $20.1 million for capital projects at all three schools

Over the past three months, New York Focus has reported extensively on the New York state prison system’s descent into tumult. An incarcerated man’s caught-on-video killing at the hands of corrections officers in December led to nationwide outrage and calls for reform. Guards responded by launching a three-week wildcat strike, which only ended after 2,000 officers lost their jobs and half a dozen allegedly beat another incarcerated person to death.

Similar turmoil has plagued other areas of New York’s carceral system. At New York City’s Rikers Island jails, four incarcerated people have died over the span of a month. The notorious complex is supposed to close in two years, but that’s unlikely to happen: Stubbornly high jail populations, delayed construction, and a “missing” sense of urgency have likely delayed closure by years, a city-appointed commission reported last week.

People are dying. Who’s supposed to be keeping an eye on these facilities?

The answer is complex: A patchwork of bodies are responsible for watchdogging New York’s state prisons and local jails. The most powerful of those bodies, however — the State Commission of Correction, or SCOC — has been missing in action when it comes to Rikers and state prison oversight.

Messiah Nantwi’s cellmate had to wipe the blood off the floor of their room.

Officers at Midstate Correctional Facility, the state prison in Central New York where the two men were incarcerated, had stormed in and beat Nantwi until he was unconscious. The cellmate had watched: One of the guards pinned him against the wall as the blood splattered, then ordered him to clean it up, he said. Hours later, the then-sanitized cell became a crime scene; Nantwi was dead. It was a week before his 23rd birthday.

Incarcerated people housed in Nantwi’s dorm heard and witnessed some of the brutal beatdown from outside the cell. Nine overcame fear of retaliation by prison guards and spoke to The New York Times, which first reported the death. Yet the sole incarcerated witness in the room, Nantwi’s cellmate, didn’t get the chance to share what he saw. The afternoon of the alleged killing, authorities removed him from Midstate — to keep him out of vengeful guards’ crosshairs, he said they told him — temporarily cutting him off from phone service.

New York Focus tracked down the cellmate, who recounted the day’s events through phone calls, electronic messages, and a handwritten letter.

What do Anthony Scaramucci, Harvey Weinstein’s attorney, and a New York City councilor accused of biting a cop at an anti-homeless shelter protest all have in common?

They’re among the dozens of people Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign has so far enlisted to fundraise on its behalf, according to records reviewed by New York Focus.

The campaign has created at least 64 public fundraising web pages for people or entities to raise money for the former governor. At least 10 of them are listed in a city database of lobbyists and government contractors whose campaign finance activities are restricted.