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.

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.

Over the past two and a half years, Mayor Eric Adams’s administration has spent tens of millions of dollars building an online tool it says will transform all social services in New York City.

The project, called MyCity, began with a splashy announcement — and then proceeded largely in secrecy, using an army of dozens of private contractors and resisting attempts at oversight. The project has no public roadmap for buildout or completion, a runaway budget, and a trail of missed deadlines. Its most-touted functionality so far is a child care subsidy portal — but child care providers and advocates have told New York Focus and testified to the City Council that it mostly hasn’t been helpful. And as money for MyCity continues to pour in, funding for the vouchers themselves is set to dry up.

Albany’s biggest battle of the year started in earnest last week, when the state Assembly and Senate released their counters to Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget proposal. At stake: how the state will spend more than $250 billion, determining everything from funding for schools to oversight of prisons, the taxes paid by millionaires to the wages paid to caregivers.

Reeling from plunging turnout for the Democratic Party in last year’s elections, New York’s leaders vowed to give voters more reason to believe that the one-party state government can deliver for them. “The days of incrementalism are over,” said a top Senate leader. “I’d like to see more dedication to solving problems holistically than just like, ‘Well, let’s do 10 percent of it now and see if we can do more next year.’ That kind of stuff is what people don’t like about government.”

Do this year’s budget proposals meet that bar? You be the judge.