Gov. Hochul talks clean energy (photo: Darren McGee/Governor's Office)

Climate activists are cheering New York’s $229 billion budget for the 2024 fiscal year, which was approved Tuesday night, celebrating three major policy victories and a series of additional funding allocations. The changes, seen as monumental by supporters and critics alike, include passage of legislation that will ban gas hookups in new construction, allow the state power authority to build and own renewable energy facilities, and create a “cap and invest” system with decreasing caps on greenhouse

Gov. Hochul talks green energy (photo: Governor's Office)

As Governor Kathy Hochul and the Legislature continue to hammer out the details of the overdue $230 billion state budget, there are major climate and energy policies at stake that environmental advocates say are crucial to meeting New York’s climate goals.

Already about three weeks late, the state budget has been held up over the governor’s insistence on further changes to the bail law and wrangling with the Legislature over her ambitious “Housing Compact”

Then-Gov. Cuomo signs legislation (photo: Darren McGee/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)

In the aftermath of the highest number of overdose deaths recorded in New York State in a single year, advocates and substance use treatment providers are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to sign what they call a crucial piece of legislation to reverse the trend. Without the new governor’s signature, they say, the state’s recently-established two-tiered substance use treatment system, with greater barriers to access for lower-income New Yorkers, will continue and

Naloxone training to reverse overdoses (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)

With the pandemic blowing a hole in the economy and leading to a drastic drop in state tax revenue, budget officials have for months been withholding payments for state contracts to manage cash flows. Among the victims of that fiscal approach are substance use treatment providers who are being forced to cut already-limited services and consider staff layoffs and furloughs, which they say will likely lead to a sharp increase in overdoses and new disease outbreaks around the

(photo: Edwin Torres/Mayor's Office)

New York City is showing modest progress in the fight to curb the explosion in drug overdoses, with the health department reporting 38 fewer deaths last year compared to 2017, after a concerted $60-million effort focused on substance abuse prevention, treatment, and education, especially with regard to opioids.

One aspect of that fight has been the expansion of access to medication-assisted treatment, which experts and activists