The New York City comptroller is arguably the city’s most powerful official after the mayor. He is the city’s financial steward and watchdog of an approximately $110 billion budget — larger than most US states’ and many countries’. He’s responsible for managing more than $270 billion in pension investments, monitoring government contracts, and rooting out fraud in city agencies.

But that power also makes him a potential target for companies seeking lucrative city contracts.

Attorneys at a top securities law firm in New York City, Pomerantz LLP, have donated thousands to Comptroller Brad Lander, who is now running for mayor, this election cycle. He’s marked a portion of those donations to be matched by taxpayer dollars.

In the same time period, the city has given the firm big business, renewing its long-standing contract and hiring it for the coveted lead counsel position in two class action lawsuits led by city pension funds.

Bilingual education is the fastest-growing department in the Hudson Valley’s Suffern Central School District — but hiring for it is tough.

It took three years for the district to find a bilingual math teacher, and a job opening for a Spanish-speaking psychologist posted last month hasn’t elicited a single application, district officials said. The need for the psychologist emerged after nearly 100 multilingual students enrolled this summer.

“When we sat down as a district in the spring planning for this, our numbers were completely different than our prediction,” said Patricia Balbuena-Rivera, Suffern’s multilingual education director.

School districts across New York state have long struggled to find qualified bilingual education teachers, and the problem has worsened over the past two years, as hundreds of thousands of new immigrants and asylum seekers arrive.