Brandon Loori had been locked up in the Broome County Jail for less than a week in May 2022 when he called his mom to tell her he had endocarditis, the same heart condition that had killed his sister one month before.

By the time his mother was allowed to see him, the 37-year-old was on a breathing tube. She visited Loori in the hospital, and his niece brought him a yellow Care Bear decorated with a sun — a reference to his habit of greeting people with, “Hey, Sunshine!” his mother told New York Focus. She pulled the plug three weeks later.

“Brandon was a great person,” Loori’s mother, Rose Davidson, said. “He was a great brother. He was a great son. A great father.”

Loori’s death was likely avoidable. He had “exhibited clear signs of an acute illness,” including severe chest pain, a state investigation later found, “and should have been immediately sent to the hospital.” But medical workers at the Binghamton jail ignored his cries for four days.

The lobbyist who has been dating New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie was recently laid off from her job at a construction labor-management partnership, New York Focus has learned.

The decision prompted Heastie to place an upset call in late June with the labor group that employed her, according to two people briefed on the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss a sensitive matter involving Heastie and the labor movement. On the receiving end of his ire was Mike Hellstrom, co-chair of the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation & Education Trust.

Hellstrom emphasized during the call with Heastie that Rebecca Lamorte’s departure “was the result of an organizational decision to move away from lobbying” and “had nothing to do with her personal life,” according to a spokesperson for LECET.

Sarah Cizmazia is quick to explain that the name of her apartment complex in Kingston, New York — Chestnut Mansion — is “very grandiose for what it is.”

When she arrived at the brick, garden-style building in April 2023, one of the first things she noticed was the bent door to her apartment. Gaps around the frame let in bugs and cold drafts.

This wasn’t the only surprise. Coming from Connecticut, she had no idea that her landlord was under state regulation. The prior July, Kingston had become the first locality outside New York City and its surrounding counties to adopt rent stabilization.

The opening pages of New York’s sweeping 2022 plan to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions includes a long list of steps the state had already taken to green its economy. Among them: advancing a congestion pricing program for New York City that would “improve air quality and enhance equity by expanding access” to mass transit.

Now, that program is in tatters. Two weeks ago, its planned start date came and went without any of its $500 million tolling cameras turned on.