The Republican treasurer and Democratic executive director of a pro-Israel political advocacy group have launched a state-level political action committee to spend directly in New York’s elections, according to Board of Elections records obtained by New York Focus.

The committee, called Solidarity PAC, is boosting Democratic primary opponents to candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party. It resembles a New York state-level version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which backs pro-Israel candidates in federal elections.

The lobbyist dating New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has been cleared to return to work before the Assembly, New York Focus has learned.

A spokesperson for the Greater New York Laborers-Employers Cooperation and Education Trust, or LECET, told New York Focus that after being barred on the advice of its former ethics lawyer, legislative and communications director Rebecca Lamorte can resume lobbying the Assembly — including Heastie’s staff — but not the speaker himself. After Lamorte was cleared to return, the former ethics attorney quit.

When Lamorte’s employer confirmed the romantic relationship to New York Focus two weeks ago, Heastie was upset. The organization has taken steps to mend fences.

On March 13, the day before the news broke, Heastie called a top official within LECET’s labor arm to return a $5,000 campaign donation from a fundraiser in late February. The labor arm, the Mason Tenders’ District Council, had been barred from meeting with Heastie since November, according to a private letter drafted by the Assembly majority’s counsel.

Speaking in Albany last month, New York’s commissioner for addiction said that all of the state’s jails and prisons were providing the “gold standard” for treating opioid addiction.

“I am very proud to report that all 44 prisons and all 58 jails are implementing all forms of medication treatment for substance use disorders,” said Chinazo Cunningham, commissioner of the Office of Addiction Services and Supports, or OASAS, during a joint legislative hearing on February 13.

Many prisons appear to be doing well: Across facilities, 91 percent of applications reviewed were granted, suggesting that the people who requested the medication are, for the most part, receiving it. But internal data from the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the state prison system, show that stark disparities in access persist. Some facilities have made the life-saving treatment less widely available than Cunningham indicated.

In April 2022, New York City Mayor Eric Adams had an idea for improving transit security: Install artificial intelligence-driven “weapons detectors” in front of subway turnstiles.

“There’s a new method that can detect weapons that are not the traditional metal detectors that you see at airports,” Adams, just weeks into his tenure, said. “You don’t even realize it’s there.”

But the detectors Adams was talking about can be inaccurate, misidentifying an array of everyday objects, from cell phones to umbrellas, as threats. When the devices ping an item, the person carrying it must be routed to more conventional secondary screening, which can cause significant delays. They’re mostly used at event venues, and experts foresaw chaos if officials implemented the tech on public transit.

“Expect delays, expect secondary screening, expect frustration, and expect to miss your train from time to time,” said the CEO of one company that makes the detectors.

On Wednesday, two years after floating his idea, Adams announced that he was finally deploying the weapons detectors in the subway system. Read New York Focus’s prescient investigation into the embattled company he’s signed with.