Editorial Roundup: New York

Albany Times Union. October 3, 223.

Editorial: Don’t bet the house on a casino

A New York City developer wants to sweeten the pot on a casino deal by promising affordable housing. It’s a song and dance we’ve seen before.

It sounds so wholesome, doesn’t it: hundreds of units of affordable housing for a city that desperately needs it.

The catch? They have to come with a casino.

That’s the pitch from a New York City developer who wants to build a gambling hall near the United Nations. The Soloviev Group says it will build 1,325 apartments, and offer nearly 40 percent of them at below market-rate rent. But the only way to make the numbers work, the company says, is to include a casino in the deal.

For anyone who has followed the push to build casinos in New York, this is just another version of the sales routine that’s been pitched around the state in one form or another. Grant us as gambling license, and your fondest wishes will come true. Money for government and schools. Lower taxes. Help for non-profits and the arts. Subsidies for horse racing, including health care for workers. And so on.

The reality, of course, has been another matter. As we and others warned, profits in the heavily saturated industry turned out to be lower than expected, even before COVID-19 forced a months-long shutdown. Casinos started asking for breaks from taxpayers.

What New York doesn’t need is a repeat of what happened in New Jersey, where when profits started to wane, the industry argued for a bailout – not to keep casinos in the money, but to save the jobs that would be lost.

It isn’t hard to imagine something similar happening with the Soloviev proposal – that down the road we could be told, once again, that profits weren’t what they were supposed to be, and the only way to protect people from rising rents or homelessness is an infusion of public largesse.

There is only one surefire way to make money gambling: Don’t. That goes double when the ante is the roof over somebody’s head.

Close maternity ward loophole

Hospitals in New York are supposed to undergo a rigorous review by a state board when they want to stop providing a service. Except when they’re not required to, under a loophole big enough to drive a maternity ward through.

Existing law, reports the Times Union’s Rachel Silberstein, requires hospitals to complete a “certificate of need” process, which includes a review of the move by a panel of experts, the state Public Health and Health Planning Council. But they can avoid that requirement if the action doesn’t cost more than $15 million. In such cases, only the approval of the state health commissioner is needed.

Ending some services, such as burn units and AIDS centers, must go before the council no matter what the cost, and state Assemblyman John McDonald, D-Cohoes, plans to introduce legislation to add maternity wards to that list. It’s a good idea – and can be made better if it can close the loophole that has allowed some hospitals to sidestep the certificate-of-need process by closing a maternity ward without formally decertifying its beds.

As we’ve seen with the proliferation of maternity ward “deserts” around the state in recent years, and with the current controversy over the proposed closing of the Burdett Birth Center in Troy – now on hold – these closings not only hurt communities, their effects reverberate throughout the health care system. They deserve as much review as possible.

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The Daily Star. November 1, 2023.

Editorial: Money is waiting — and our readers need to know about it

For many, times are tough.

The most recent census data shows 14.3% of New Yorker’s are living in poverty. That may not sound like a high percentage until you consider 19.6 million people live here. That means more than 2 million residents of our state are struggling to get by every day.

Groceries, utilities and fuel — everything we need to get through the day is expensive. We don’t believe that is going to change anytime soon, if ever.

As we head into the colder months, families in our area will be hit with sky-high electric bills, soaring fuel oil costs, purchases of snow gear, winter tires and gifts for the holidays. Add to those expenses any unexpected medical costs stemming from the impending cold, flu, COVID-19 and RSV season and the winter can start to look pretty frightening. If you are struggling now, the next few months are going to be a challenge.

Imagine opening your mail one day to find a check for $500. What impact would that have on your family?

The state comptroller’s office is currently holding $18.4 billion in lost money according to its unclaimed funds website. Some of that could be yours, and we want you to know about it.

The state of New York requires banks, insurance companies, corporations, utility companies, courts and more to report unclaimed funds to the comptroller’s office.

Those businesses are first required to notify you by mail and publish information in local newspapers when they cannot locate you to pay you what you are due. When they cannot reach you, they send the funds to the state to be held until you claim them.

Frequently, checks from those businesses legally required to report unclaimed funds can’t reach you because of a change of address.

If you are wondering how to claim the money you are owed, it’s simple.

Visit the website: https://www.osc.state.ny.us/unclaimed-funds

Click the “search now” button.

At this point you enter your name and cross your fingers. Several of our staff were delighted to learn they had unclaimed funds sitting with the state and those checks have already arrived and been deposited. Without naming names, staffers have received checks for $516, $667 and more.

The legislation requiring the reporting of lost money does not only protect individuals- it protects businesses as well. If you are a business owner, you can follow the same steps and use the “Search for Organization” field.

After you have searched for your information, a list of matches will generate. If you see your name and an address that matches any of your previous addresses, click the “claim” button and proceed through the claims process.

The prospect of free money sounds too good to be true. And in a world plagued by new scams every day, it can be hard to trust the legitimacy of this process. But, it is legitimate and that money is rightfully yours. So claim it.

It is not often we have an opportunity to use our editorials to make a real difference in people’s lives, but here we can and we want to help our readers.

Residents of New York state are lucky. Not every state requires unclaimed funds to be reported and for the people who live elsewhere, that money is simply lost forever.

We urge our readers to check the unclaimed funds website and trust the process. Who knows what money is out there waiting for you to claim it.

Good luck, readers!

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New York Post. November 1, 2023.

Editorial: NY cannabis license system broken, say idiots who broke it

For a sad laugh, consider the lawmakers who gave New York its broken legal-marijuana market whining over the proliferation of illegal smoke shops in their nabes.

“What do we need to do? Because clearly whatever we did isn’t really working,” lamented state Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), a 20-year Albany vet and chief architect of the marijuana-legalization law, at a Monday hearing.

Whatever we did? Are you kidding, senator?

You legalized marijuana in 2021 with no guardrails to make it easy to close illegal shops, and with Rube Goldberg rules for (eventually) opening legal ones.

Her equally clueless Manhattan colleague Sen. Brad Hoylman-Sigal complained that the nearly dozen illegal marijuana shops in his district “undermines the legal market” and presents a public-health threat for young people.

And he’s supposed to be one of the smart ones.

“Maybe it does require legislative action as opposed to just regulatory action,” Krueger mused. Ya think?

Meanwhile, the state is losing millions in taxes not paid by the out-of-control black market nor by the still-struggling-to-launch legal shops.

Crime is soaring amidst the proliferation of bootleg storefronts and mobile dispensaries selling unregulated, untaxed and oft-unhealthy weed products — outlets often targeted by gun-toting thugs.

As the Good Book says, “You reap what you sow.”

Maybe next year (they don’t go back to work in Albany ’til then), Krueger, Hoylman-Sigal and other lawmakers will trouble themselves to fix the broken legal-weed market.

Or maybe they’ll stick to their perverse priorities and let it all go up in smoke.

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Adirondack Daily Enterprise. October 28, 2023.

Editorial: Early voting checklist

The early voting period for this year’s election started today (Saturday).

This will be the fourth year since New York state began to offer an early voting period. There’s plenty of reasons to cast your vote early — you can avoid the crowds and parking problems on Election Day; vote on a day off, when you don’t have to work voting into your schedule; and, in the case of Franklin County voters, you can even make a day out of it by visiting the early voting station in Malone.

Below is a three-point checklist we hope will be helpful as voters head to the polls early.

1. First, make sure you are registered to vote and your registration information — including your current address — is correct. You can look up your voter information by visiting voterlookup.elections.ny.gov or by calling your county Board of Elections office. Today, Oct. 28, is the last day to register to vote to be able to vote in this year’s election.

2. Do you know what races will be on the ballot, and who the candidates are? If not, we would suggest visiting www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com/news/politics to see the latest election information, including candidate questionnaires for most of the races in the Tri-Lakes region.

3. Make sure you’re voting at the right place. After looking up your voter registration, you should know which county you are registered to vote in. Voters who live in Essex County can vote early between Oct. 28 and Nov. 5 at one of two locations: At the Lake Placid Beach House, 31 Parkside Dr., or at the Essex County Public Safety Building, 702 Stowersville Road in Lewis. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday except Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, when the hours are noon to 8 p.m. Voters who live in Franklin County only have one early voting station: The Franklin County Board of Elections office in Malone. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday except Oct. 30 and Nov. 1, when the hours are noon to 8 p.m.

Whether you vote early or on Election Day, you’re doing your civic duty. If you’re not planning to vote this year, we urge you to change your mind. Your voice matters. Your vote matters. That’s especially true in local elections such as this one.

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The Associated Press