Natalie Colon Vasquez works as a clerk at Woodhull Medical Center, a public hospital in north Brooklyn, checking in patients struggling with addiction. She hopes to become an addiction counselor herself, so a couple days a week after work, she attends an online class through Stony Brook University to get certified.

Colon Vasquez wouldn’t be able to work and attend classes without the voucher she gets from the government to pay for her 3-year-old son’s daycare, she told New York Focus. As a single mother whose parents are in poor health, she doesn’t have other child care options.

“I do everything on my own,” she said. Without the voucher, day care would cost about a third of her income. “Out of pocket, I wouldn’t be able to afford day care…. Without my day care, I wouldn’t be able to work.”

But Colon Vasquez is set to lose her voucher later this year. The Child Care Assistance Program, which pays for her son’s day care and is largely funded by the state and federal governments, is facing a budget shortfall in New York City. The program covers almost the entire cost of child care for income-eligible parents with children aged six weeks to thirteen years old.

New York Focus spoke with New York City parents who, like Colon Vasquez, have benefited from the program’s expanded eligibility levels and are set to lose their benefits. Here’s what they told us.

It’s no surprise that lobbyist Tonio Burgos is fundraising for Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for New York City mayor. Burgos worked for 15 years for Andrew’s father, former Governor Mario Cuomo. He has long been loyal to the family.

But you wouldn’t know that from the mayoral candidate’s most recent campaign finance report, which failed to disclose any fundraising by Burgos or anyone else.

Records obtained by New York Focus show that on March 7, Burgos sent out a fundraising email seeking donations for Cuomo’s campaign. The email directed potential donors to a fundraising webpage set up by the Cuomo campaign that told them that their donations would be matched with taxpayer dollars — even though Burgos’s work as a New York City registered lobbyist means that any gifts he solicits are ineligible for a match under the city’s public campaign finance system.

In a campaign filing submitted Monday, Cuomo disclosed having had no “intermediaries” — also known as bundlers — that raised money for his mayoral bid. Every other major mayoral candidate has disclosed bundlers, except for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, who had only been fundraising for one week before the filing deadline.

New York Focus identified fundraising pages that the Cuomo campaign set up for around 30 bundlers, though it’s not clear how many of them have solicited donations yet. The pages tell donors that their gifts will be matched, even though at least five of the bundlers do work that disqualifies donations they solicit from matching funds.

In six weeks, New York state will push tens of thousands of low-paid home health care workers onto a private insurance plan that won’t cover basic medical needs.

That’s not the only alarming thing about the plan. The founder of Leading Edge, the company set to administer the plan, was convicted of submitting falsified documents to Congress in an attempt to hide corporate losses, and the company appears to have spent years helping New York home care employers skirt a law meant to boost worker pay and benefits, according to court filings reviewed by New York Focus.

Leading Edge’s background raises concerns of whether the upcoming transfer could present an opportunity for a company with a sketchy past to cash in on the backs of New York’s health care workforce, paid for by taxpayer money.

A pro-Israel fundraising group that funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to state Assembly candidates last year has now jumped into New York City Council races. The group, known as Solidarity PAC, appears to have raised around $80,000 for seven candidates it has endorsed over the past six months, a New York Focus analysis of campaign finance disclosures found. City council primaries will take place in June.

While small relative to its activity in last year’s state legislative primaries, the sum is significant for city council campaigns, which have lower contribution limits than state races. The apparent Solidarity PAC-affiliated donations amount to a quarter of endorsed candidates’ total hauls in the six months. New York City’s eight-to-one public matching program will further stretch those dollars: They could unlock nearly $240,000 in additional funds for the campaigns, according to the disclosures.