When Governor Kathy Hochul took office in 2021, she didn’t want to pick fights with the legislature. She rejected less than 60 of the nearly 900 bills the legislature passed that year, the lowest veto rate in at least a quarter-century. Meanwhile, she negotiated amendments to more than 150 bills — a record high.

But it didn’t take Hochul long to shed that reticence with the veto pen. In her first three full years in office, she axed an average of roughly one in seven bills that went to her desk, a higher rate than her recent predecessors.

This year, she vetoed 124 standalone bills as well as 15 line items in the state budget. 

Ever since New York passed its landmark climate law in 2019, a question has dogged its implementation: Who should pay the $15 billion annual cost of slashing emissions?

Two years ago, Governor Kathy Hochul offered an answer: corporate polluters. She outlined an economy-wide system, called “cap and invest,” that would put a price on pollution and drive the steep emissions cuts mandated by law.

The program might finally see the light of day in 2025.

Advocates and researchers blame the initial popularization of the excited delirium diagnosis on a corporate-backed campaign to absolve cops of responsibility for deaths in their custody. In Rochester, the training document, created in 2016 and last edited in late 2020, lifts directly from materials disseminated by an organization linked to Taser, producer of the eponymous stun gun. The document warns officers that the syndrome’s sufferers experience a “diminished sense of pain” that could render police batons ineffective. And it claims that “saying ‘I can’t breathe’” is a sign of excited delirium.

This is my first year as a reporter working the education beat. I’ve learned a lot in the last nine months — not least of which is how incredibly complex and multifaceted the education system is in both New York state and across the country.