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    In Late-Stage Budget Talks, Hochul Wins Concessions From N.Y. Lawmakers

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    Gov. Kathy Hochul used the $237 billion budget to wedge in contentious issues like extending Mayor Eric Adams’s control over New York City schools.In the days approaching April 1, the corridors and backrooms of the New York State Capitol tend to be filled with tension and chaos, as the governor, lawmakers and staff scramble to meet the deadline to pass a state budget that is as much a policy blueprint as it is a spending plan.This year was different.Budget talks dragged out almost three weeks past the April 1 deadline, leading some to wonder whether Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat in her first full term, had lost control of the process.But by the time the budget was officially passed by the Legislature on Saturday, it was clear that Ms. Hochul had achieved her goal: a final $237 billion budget that included a checklist of her priorities. They included new resources to fight retail crime, a statewide artificial intelligence consortium, and a landmark housing deal aimed at bolstering residential construction — all without raising taxes on the wealthy.The governor’s long-game approach seemed to reflect lessons she has learned in reaching the three budget agreements since she took office in 2021: that a governor can lead while honoring the spirit of collaboration and that a good deal is better than a fast one.After Ms. Hochul announced on Monday that leaders had reached agreement on a budget framework, she continued to negotiate over the next few days, most notably persuading state lawmakers to use the budget to extend mayoral control of New York City schools for two more years.The final budget contains $2.4 billion to support migrant services in New York City, an increase of half a billion dollars over last year’s funding that should cover case management, medical expenses and legal resources. It also includes a substantial new tax break for developers, expanded tenant protections and new enforcement powers for localities to crack down on unlicensed cannabis shops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York Must Figure Out How to Fix Cannabis Mess, Hochul Orders

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a review of the way New York State licenses cannabis businesses after calling the sluggish rollout of legal cannabis a “disaster.”Gov. Kathy Hochul has told New York officials to come up with a fix for the way the state licenses cannabis businesses amid widespread frustration over the plodding pace of the state’s legal cannabis rollout and the explosion of unlicensed dispensaries.The governor has ordered a top-to-bottom review of the state’s licensing bureaucracy, to begin Monday — weeks after she declared the rollout “a disaster” and called off a Cannabis Control Board meeting when she learned the body was prepared to hand out only a few licenses.The main goal of the review, to be conducted by Jeanette Moy, the commissioner of the Office of General Services, is to shorten the time it takes to process applications and get businesses open, officials said.The state Office of Cannabis Management, which recommends applicants to the board for final approval, received 7,000 applications for licenses last fall from businesses seeking to open dispensaries, grow cannabis and manufacture products. But regulators have awarded just 109 so far this year. The agency has just 32 people assigned to evaluate the applications.Ms. Moy has “a proven track record of improving government operations,” the governor said in a statement, and will provide a playbook to turn around the cannabis management office “and jump-start the next phase of New York’s legal cannabis market.”In an interview, Ms. Moy said her goal was to work with the cannabis management office “to identify ways in which we can support them as they look to streamline and move forward some of the backlogs and challenges that may be faced in this industry.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

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      Even with the National Guard patrolling the system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn on Thursday. Others remain unfazed.The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      National Guard Can’t Carry Long Guns While Checking Bags in Subway

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an order forbidding the weapons at bag-check stations on Wednesday, directly after her announcement that soldiers would be deployed to New York City’s subways.Shortly after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that hundreds of National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system and check riders’ bags, her office made an adjustment: Soldiers searching bags would not carry long guns.The change, which was first reported by The Daily News, was ordered by Ms. Hochul on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. Ms. Hochul issued a directive that National Guard members would be prohibited from carrying long guns at bag-check stations, he said. Soldiers not working at the stations would presumably be allowed to carry them.Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ban on long guns at bag-checking stations a “relief,” but said the Guard’s presence underground remained “an unnecessary overreaction based on fear, not facts.”“Deploying military personnel to the subways will not make New Yorkers feel safe,” Ms. Lieberman said. “It will, unfortunately, create a perfect storm for tension, escalation and further criminalization of Black and brown New Yorkers.”Early images of the National Guard’s deployment showed soldiers standing near turnstiles in the subterranean system, wearing camouflage and military gear and holding long guns.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said the move to flood the system with reinforcements — 750 members of the New York National Guard, and an additional 250 personnel from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — would help commuters and visitors feel safe.Subway safety, a perpetual concern for New Yorkers, has been a challenging issue for public officials, who can be as sensitive to the perception that mass transit is dangerous as they are to an actual rise in crime.In February, following a 45 percent spike in major crimes in the first month of the year compared with the same period last year, Mayor Eric Adams ordered an additional 1,000 police officers into the subway system. Reported crime rates in the system declined that month, according to city data, and the overall rise in major crimes for the year as of March 3 was 13 percent, Police Department data shows.Ms. Hochul’s announcement this week drew criticism from public officials and from some members of her own party.Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that the plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Emily Gallagher, an assemblywoman and democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said that Ms. Hochul’s move was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that validated “G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.”John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, cited recent statistics suggesting that transit crime had dropped.“Our transit system is not a ‘war’ zone!” he wrote on X. More

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      Brian Benjamin’s Corruption Case Is Revived by Appeals Court

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      Prosecutors have said Brian Benjamin, the former lieutenant governor of New York, planned to funnel $50,000 in state money to a developer in exchange for campaign donations.A federal appeals court on Friday revived corruption charges against former Lt. Gov. Brian A. Benjamin of New York, saying prosecutors had sufficiently demonstrated a plan to funnel $50,000 in state money to a now-deceased developer in exchange for campaign contributions.The appeals court’s decision reversed a ruling in December 2022 by Judge J. Paul Oetken of Federal District Court in Manhattan that threw out the bribery charges. The decision sent the case back to Judge Oetken for further proceedings, although Mr. Benjamin may appeal.The prosecution, which began nearly two years ago, is now proceeding under further shadow of uncertainty. The developer, Gerald Migdol, who was likely to be prosecutors’ primary witness, died in February. The appellate ruling also comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2023 that narrowed the kinds of corruption cases that federal prosecutors may bring.But on Friday, a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said that in Mr. Benjamin’s case, the indictment “sufficiently alleged an explicit quid pro quo.”A lawyer for Mr. Benjamin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The charges against Mr. Benjamin grew out of his actions in 2019, while he was a Democratic state senator representing Harlem.Federal prosecutors charged that Mr. Benjamin used his office to obtain a $50,000 state grant for a nonprofit run by Mr. Migdol, a real estate developer and homeless shelter operator, in exchange for Mr. Migdol arranging thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions for Mr. Benjamin.Mr. Migdol, who eventually pleaded guilty to related charges, cooperated with the government in its case against Mr. Benjamin before his death. Mr. Benjamin was also charged with falsifying campaign donation forms in connection with the scheme and providing false information during a background check in August 2021, after he was chosen by Gov. Kathy Hochul to be the state’s lieutenant governor. Mr. Benjamin still faces trial on those two counts, which Judge Oetken allowed to stand.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Hochul Pushes Proposals Cracking Down on Unlicensed Cannabis Shops

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      Legal retailers are struggling to get their footing in the face of a much larger illicit market.Gov. Kathy Hochul visited New York City on Wednesday to drum up support for her latest proposals for shutting down the unlicensed marijuana shops that have exploded in number in the wake of the legalization of recreational cannabis.There are more than 400 illicit weed shops in Manhattan alone — outnumbering Starbucks stores in the borough and far surpassing the few dozen licensed cannabis retailers in the entire state.At a news conference at the governor’s office in Midtown Manhattan attended by several owners of licensed dispensaries, Ms. Hochul sought to allay concerns about a return to the heavy-handed enforcement tactics of the war on drugs while pushing for measures that she said would give “some teeth” to the so far ineffective efforts to wipe out the unlicensed shops.Her appearance came as state lawmakers were considering her proposal to strengthen the hand of local agencies by giving them the power to padlock stores. She was joined by licensed dispensary owners who said that the legal market could not compete with the cut-rate prices in illicit shops. The governor and business owners also called on search engines and social media companies like Google and Yelp to remove content about unlicensed shops, which they said added to the confusion among consumers about what weed shops were licensed and which were not.The governor said that the illicit shops posed a public health hazard and undermined the state’s effort to build a cannabis industry that could provide opportunities for people harmed by the war on drugs. She said that efforts to deter the stores with raids and fines over the last year had been concentrated in the hands of too few agencies and had not been effective. Her proposal would make it easier for the state’s Office of Cannabis Management to obtain court orders to padlock stores and would allow for the orders to be executed by local agencies that had more personnel.“More and more cash keeps going in their doors and not the doors of our legitimate operators — and that’s what needs to change,” she said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul Apologizes For Israel-Hamas Analogy to Canada

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      In remarks made at a Jewish philanthropy event, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that if Canada attacked the United States as Hamas did Israel, “there would be no Canada the next day.”Gov. Kathy Hochul apologized on Friday night for remarks she made at a Jewish philanthropy event in New York City that implied that Israel would be justified in destroying Gaza because of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.In a speech on Thursday at the event, for the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of New York, Ms. Hochul began by calling out Hamas for being a terrorist organization that “must be stopped,” saying that Israel could not continue to live with “that threat, that specter over them.” She then attempted to make an analogy to the United States, relating the war to her hometown, Buffalo.“If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day,” Ms. Hochul said in a video of the speech posted on social media. “That is a natural reaction. You have a right to defend yourself and to make sure that it never happens again. And that is Israel’s right.”In a statement provided to The New York Times on Friday night, after the speech began circulating on social media, Ms. Hochul said that she regretted her “inappropriate analogy.” She apologized for her “poor choice of words.”“While I have been clear in my support of Israel’s right to self-defense, I have also repeatedly said and continue to believe that Palestinian civilian casualties should be avoided and that more humanitarian aid must go to the people of Gaza,” she said.In a post on X, Assemblyman Zohran Kwame Mamdani said: “Governor Hochul justifying genocide, while laughing. Disgusting.”The backlash to the governor’s comments represented new territory for Ms. Hochul, who has rarely courted controversy during her time in office, in stark contrast to her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo.Ms. Hochul had been addressing the annual U.J.A. lawyers division event at the Pierre Hotel. The event was geared toward supporting the foundation’s “critical work in response to mounting needs on the ground in Israel and ongoing needs in New York and around the world,” according to its website.The foundation posted about Ms. Hochul’s remarks later Thursday night on X, thanking her “for always standing with the Jewish community and against antisemitism and hate in New York.”The governor’s speech comes as the war in Gaza is escalating. Israel ramped up its military operations this week along the Gaza-Egypt border, where the vast majority of Gazans have fled during the war. International leaders have warned that the operation could end in catastrophe, with President Emmanuel Macron of France saying that the situation could become an “unprecedented humanitarian disaster.” More

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      Providence Officials Approve Overdose Prevention Center

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      The facility, also known as a safe injection center, will be the first in Rhode Island and the only one in the U.S. outside New York City to operate openly.More than two years ago, Rhode Island became the first state in the nation to authorize overdose prevention centers, facilities where people would be allowed to use illicit drugs under professional supervision. On Thursday, the Providence City Council approved the establishment of what will be the state’s first so-called safe injection site.Minnesota is the only other state to approve these sites, also known as supervised injection centers and harm reduction centers, but no facility has yet opened there. While several states and cities across the country have taken steps toward approving these centers, the concept has faced resistance even in more liberal-leaning states, where officials have wrestled with the legal and moral implications. The only two sites operating openly in the country are in New York City, where Bill de Blasio, who was then mayor, announced the opening of the first center in 2021.The centers employ medical and social workers who guard against overdoses by supplying oxygen and naloxone, the overdose-reversing drug, as well as by distributing clean needles, hygiene products and tests for viruses.Supporters say these centers prevent deaths and connect people with resources. Brandon Marshall, a professor and the chair of the Department of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, said studies from other countries “show that overdose prevention centers save lives, increase access to treatment, and reduce public drug use and crime in the communities in which they’re located.”Opponents of the centers, including law enforcement groups, say that the sites encourage a culture of permissiveness around illegal drugs, fail to require users to seek treatment and bring drug use into neighborhoods that are already struggling with high overdose rates.Keith Humphreys, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University, said that while supervised drug consumption sites “reduce risks while people use drugs inside them,” they reach only a few people and “don’t alter the severity or character of a neighborhood’s drug problem.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How to Boost Voter Turnout With Just One Signature

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      In a rare bit of political good news in the final days of 2023, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York has signed into law legislation aimed at increasing voter turnout.For so many people, the temptation to tune out in this moment of uninspiring politics is stronger than ever. But in Albany, as in Washington, one of the clearest ways to build a saner, more responsive political system is to vastly increase the number of voters who cast ballots.The bill enacted by Ms. Hochul and the State Legislature would do just that, by moving many county and local elections across New York to even-numbered years, aligning them with federal, statewide and State Legislature elections that draw more voters to the polls.Abysmally low turnout in New York is a key culprit behind Albany’s dysfunctional politics, which sometimes seem mystifyingly divorced from the urgent needs of millions of residents. Consider, for example, the state’s failure over the past year to address a brutal housing crisis by adopting policies to build housing in the New York City suburbs and enact protections for tenants such as requiring a good cause for evictions.When smaller numbers of people show up at the polls, elections are less competitive, enhancing the power of special interests — from donors to industry lobbyists and the so-called NIMBYs who have resisted the development of much-needed housing across New York State.The research backs this up. One report, from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, found that changing local elections to coincide with national elections led to more accountable and responsive government and saved taxpayers money.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More