Peter Sterne

1 week ago | cityandstateny.com | Rebecca C. Lewis |Austin Jefferson |Peter Sterne

At long last, the state Legislature has started printing budget bills, paving the way for legislators to begin hours of marathon voting to finally get the spending plan wrapped up. As of early Wednesday morning, the Legislature had introduced three of the remaining nine budget bills, leaving six more that still need printing. Still, PPGG had details about a number of other issues that drew attention during ongoing budget talks.

3 weeks ago | cityandstateny.com | Peter Sterne

On April 11, Nicholas Turner received a curious email from someone representing the Department of Government Efficiency, the Trump administration program tasked with cutting government funding and agencies. But Turner doesn’t work for the government; he’s the president and director of the Vera Institute of Justice, a well-known nonprofit organization based in New York City that was founded in the 1960s to focus on criminal justice reform efforts.

3 weeks ago | cityandstateny.com | Peter Sterne

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal to expand the eligibility of those eligible for early release from state prisons has prompted criticism from more conservative state lawmakers, but the state prison system proposed an even more sweeping expansion of eligibility for early release last year, City & State has learned.

3 weeks ago | cityandstateny.com | Peter Sterne

At least three Venezuelan men who were seeking asylum in New York are now being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in northern Texas and are at risk of being removed from the country, possibly to a notorious detention camp in El Salvador, court documents reveal. The three immigrants – referred to as F.G.M., H.I.D.R. and O.A.S. in court documents – are Venezuelan men who entered the U.S., applied for asylum and lived in New York.

3 weeks ago | cityandstateny.com | Peter Sterne

Gov. Kathy Hochul has said that she’s willing to hold up the state budget for as long as it takes to get legislative leaders to agree to her policy proposals – but most City & State readers expect the budget to be wrapped up in the next couple weeks. More than 380 people entered City & State’s 2025 state budget poll, with guesses ranging from April 10 at the earliest to Aug. 8 at the latest.