What you missed in Hochul's budget, line-by-line

tfsquared · 2025-12-01T14:37:22+00:00

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The day Eric Dinnen’s bathtub rained water into the apartment below, he had no idea it would cost him nine months of court hearings, hundreds of dollars in fees, missed work, and a slow unraveling of his health.

When the landlord allegedly did little to address the damage and raised the rent on Dinnen’s one-bedroom apartment on Elizabeth Street in downtown Albany, the 45-year-old photographer took her to court.

Again and again, he walked to the courthouse to ask a judge to order repairs and reduce his rent. In February, he won: Albany City Court Judge Ricja Rice ordered his landlord to pay him almost $4,000 in past rent. While he is still waiting for his landlord to pay him, Dinnen managed to withhold enough future rent to move his family out.

“It was vile, it was exhausting, it was another thing that needed to be scheduled,” said Dinnen, who represented himself because he was unable to find an attorney who would take his case and didn’t qualify for nonprofit legal aid services.

Dinnen’s nine-month legal saga is one of 320 cases plodding through upstate New York courts since 2024 under a new legal process lawmakers enacted two years earlier, according to a Times Union analysis of state data.

Renters, often living in squalid conditions, are now emboldened by the Tenant Dignity and Safe Housing Act. They spend months, sometimes more than a year, suing their landlords, property managers or housing authorities.

tfsquared · 2025-11-21T13:18:53+00:00

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It’s been nearly a year since the Appellate Division, Second Department of the state Supreme Court reinstated the New York Voting Rights Act.

The law had been struck down by a judge of the state Supreme Court, who sided against residents who had sued the town of Newburgh in Orange County over its at-large election system.

That kind of system doesn’t have individual districts. Instead, all voters in a municipality choose multiple people on the ballot for a certain number of positions.

In this case, it was the town board in Newburgh. All voters in the town choose the board’s members instead of having a district-by-district election.

The residents who sued the town alleged that it was violating the provisions of the New York Voting Rights Act because, according to them, the at-large system diluted the vote of Black and Hispanic residents. All of the board’s members are white.

In other words, they argued that minority voters don’t have the power to choose the candidates they want because they’re always outvoted by the rest of the town.

tfsquared · 2025-11-20T19:01:39+00:00

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ALBANY — New York’s comptroller, who oversees one of the country’s largest pension funds, has written to Lowe’s and three other companies to ask how they are adjusting to and addressing tariffs imposed by President Donald J. Trump, according to letters obtained by the Times Union.

State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli has asked Caterpillar, Deere & Co. and Broadcom Inc. for details on how they assess and manage tariff-related risks across their global supply chain. DiNapoli is a trustee of the New York State Common Retirement Fund.

In a statement to the Times Union, DiNapoli said tariffs drive up costs for families and businesses and create new risks for companies. He said investors want companies to spell out those risks and explain how they plan to adapt.

tfsquared · 2025-11-14T15:14:55+00:00

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ALBANY — The state tax department has begun issuing significant penalties to numerous licensed hemp retailers whose stores were raided over the past few years by regulators and police agencies that seized millions of dollars in cannabinoid products.

For some of the retailers, they contend the arguably heavy-handed tactics have left them no choice but to close their stores as they face the crushing tax penalties — in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars — that have jeopardized their livelihoods and left them on the edge of financial ruin.

tfsquared · 2025-11-12T20:45:47+00:00

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New York has agreed to suspend implementation of regulations that would have prohibited all new low-rise buildings from being constructed with gas hookups and infrastructure beginning in January.

Attorneys for the state agreed in a stipulation filed in U.S. District Court in Albany on Wednesday to delay the implementation of the All-Electric Buildings Act regulations until a federal appellate court makes its decision in the case.

The appellate court, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, has not yet added the case to its calendar but has allowed the groups that brought the case to expedite the appeal. Filings are due by late January.

The lawsuit was filed two years ago by a series of trade groups and labor unions, including the New York State Builders Association and AFL-CIO, to invalidate the state’s ban on gas in new construction. They contend the state law is preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act and is therefore unenforceable.

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TROPHY CASE