Latest news with #KathleenC.Hochul
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Jefferson Community College awarded $4M toward $13M project to keep transitioning soldiers in area
Apr. 30—WATERTOWN — Empire State Development has announced a $4 million award that will support a $13 million project at Jefferson Community College aimed at keeping Fort Drum soldiers and their spouses in the area upon completion of their military service. The Dulles Building on JCC's Coffeen Street campus will be renovated and outfitted as the Next Move NY Vocational Training and Job Readiness Facility, which will enhance offerings at the college and further develop the workforce pipeline for transitioning soldiers and their spouses to attain them attain local employment, according to ESD. The award is part of the $10 million Next Move NY Initiative developed by the North Country Regional Economic Development Council and announced by Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul in December 2023. Advocate Drum will also receive a $600,000 grant for development of its planned Live, Love, Stay Program, which will be focused on getting soldiers and their families to consider putting down roots in the north country after they separate from service, and to build careers and futures in the region. "ESD and the North Country REDC are working hard to build a workforce pipeline for transitioning Fort Drum soldiers to New York's job market," said Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Hope Knight said in a statement. "These awards to JCC's Next Move NY Vocational Training and Job Readiness Facility and Advocate Drum's Next Move NY Live, Love, Stay Program will help keep veterans in New York State, fuel economic growth and open new opportunities in the region." According to ESD, as the closest academic institution to Fort Drum, JCC is well-positioned to offer new, high-demand programming in engineering technology, mechatronics, advanced manufacturing and the skilled trades. The college will renovate and outfit the Dulles Building to accommodate such programming. ESD said the investment aims for an anticipated 13% increase in JCC enrollment overall, 45% increase in veteran and active-duty enrollment and a 15% increase enrollment for soldiers/spouses transitioning from Fort Drum. The renovated facility and investment will also enable JCC to develop educational programs in critical workforce and trade skills areas, addressing the needs of regional employers, while supporting transitioning military members and their families. "We are honored to receive this significant support through the Next Move NY initiative," JCC President Dan Dupee said in ESD's statement. "This investment will allow us to establish a state-of-the-art Job Readiness Facility dedicated to supporting Fort Drum soldiers, veterans, and their families as they transition to civilian life. This facility will not only strengthen our college but also bolster the regional workforce and create new pathways for success in high-demand careers." With its grant, Advocate Drum — also known as Fort Drum Regional Liaison Organization or FDRLO — will work with the Development Authority of the North Country to establish the administrative framework to implement the Next Move NY Live, Love, Stay Program. According to ESD, it is hoped that by working with local partners to highlight the various cultural and recreational amenities the North Country has to offer, soldiers and their families can see themselves as part of the community and decide to transition to civilian employment locally after their military service is completed. Advocate Drum will also work with Adirondack North Country Association to provide Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming for local businesses interested in welcoming, hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. "Advocate Drum is very excited to be a partner in the Next Move NY program, helping retain the talented transitioning soldiers and their families here in the North Country," Advocate Drum Executive Director Michael S. McFadden said in the statement. "I can't think of a better way to grow our local workforce than to recruit some of America's best, our former Soldiers and families of the 10th Mountain Division and Fort Drum." Both the JCC and Advocate Drum projects are priorities outlined by the North Country REDC in the Next Move NY initiative. DANC was previously awarded $3.94 million to establish the administrative framework to implement the Next Move NY regional plan and to help build the most robust transitioning soldier and spouse retention pipeline in the country. DANC is also establishing an office at 124 Franklin St. in JCC's $3 million education and entrepreneurial center, called The Nest, to assist Fort Drum soldiers and spouses with accessing Next Move NY offerings. Fort Drum is the largest Army installation in the Northeastern U.S. and New York state's largest single site employer, with nearly 15,000 active-duty service members.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
N.Y. legislative leaders predict budget progress next week, spending plan nearly four weeks late
Apr. 25—ALBANY — New York's legislative leaders said they're nearly finished with debates over the last parts of the state budget, and could deliver a package of bills for review and approval next week. It's a light at the end of the tunnel for months of closed-door negotiations on the now nearly four-week overdue state spending plan that is looking to collect and spend upward of $250 billion for fiscal year 2025-26 and make some heavily debated changes to various state laws. Discussions are nearing their end but not completed yet. The governor, Senate majority leader and Assembly speaker met for hours on Thursday afternoon and on Friday, wrapping up discussions on a variety of topics that they've largely declined to outline publicly with much specificity. Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul told reporters in the Capitol late Friday that "the process is closing down." Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie gave limited comments to the press in the halls of the Capitol. What they have said indicates that they intend to continue conversations into the weekend and hope to have the legislation put together for voting next week. "Most of the top line is done," Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, told reporters Friday. "The other areas all need to be cleaned up." The leaders said on Thursday that they intended to continue discussions virtually over the weekend in anticipation of finalizing the spending plan next week. For nearly a month now, lawmakers have struggled to come to an agreement on four main topics: involuntary commitment changes, a criminal mask ban, changes to trial discovery laws and a statewide school cellphone ban. Along the way, Hochul, who is empowered to write and submit the budget legislation for approval in the Senate and Assembly, has sought to add in further policy items not directly related to state spending, like lowering the age to hire a corrections officer from 21 to 18, and expanding the state's good behavior and merit time programs to shave down incarcerated people's sentences. Hochul's remarks to reporters Friday indicate that most of those issues have been nailed down, but she didn't list the mask ban as a settled topic, saying that topic had come up later in discussions and was still being debated. Hochul said her "affordability agenda," which included a number of measures aimed at cutting taxes and costs for average New York families, was also settled Friday. Hochul has, since April 1, submitted short-term extender bills to fund state government along the terms of last year's state spending plan while discussions continue. Lawmakers passed another short-term extension through Tuesday, and could either start passing budget bills by then or pass another extender to continue discussions.
Yahoo
25-04-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Hochul wants to expand involuntary commitment. NNY mental health officials say they prefer community care
Apr. 24—ALBANY — State lawmakers appear poised to include a legislative package in this year's budget that would make it easier for licensed professionals to commit someone to a mental hospital. The directors of two north country mental health and community services departments aren't convinced what's on the table will help in rural New York. In her budget proposal for 2025-26, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul proposed an amendment to the state's mental hygiene laws; her core push is to allow for someone to be involuntarily committed to mental health care when they demonstrate an inability to provide themselves food, shelter or medical care, and remove the requirement that the individual has to demonstrate evidence of imminent risk of harm, or recently committed acts of violence or self-harm to qualify for commitment. She also proposed expanding the list of people who can authorize an involuntary commitment. Current laws require two physicians make the determination, which is then authorized by a psychiatrist. Hochul proposed changing that to require two doctors or one doctor and a nurse practitioner. Other changes around the edges include more monetary investments in youth mental health, and a change to the 1999 Kendra's Law that establishes involuntary outpatient treatment, by expanding who can apply for an outpatient treatment order against an individual, rolling out video conference options and enhancing voluntary post-treatment care opportunities. Dr. Ann Marie Sullivan, commissioner of the state Office of Mental Health, said these are being rolled out to address the most significant cases of mental illness that are impacting communities across the state. In early April, she stood with a handful of local lawmakers from the Capitol Region and downstate mental health treatment facility executives, highlighting a handful of high-profile recent incidents. She pushed back on arguments that involuntary commitment is a coercive tactic that doesn't work well. "It's not like involuntary commitment is ever the first thing you think of, and involuntary commitment happens when we feel that nothing has been successful with this individual," Sullivan said. "It's a tough decision to make." Tim Ruetten, the director of the Jefferson County Department of Community Services, said in an interview that he is generally opposed to using involuntary commitment except in the most dire of circumstances. "It's always a last resort, because it's traumatic, frankly," he said. "When someone's forced into a hospital, that's a very difficult experience." In Lewis County, Community Services and Mental Health Director Anna Platz said that while each case is different and commitment is occasionally required, her goal is to keep patients in their communities. "I think it only adds trauma when someone has to leave, especially in a community like Lewis County, because we don't have a 9.39 hospital," she said, referring to the state law definition of a hospital determined to be able to take involuntarily committed patients. In Jefferson County, Samaritan Medical Center is a 9.39 hospital and has recently invested in expanding its psychiatric ward, but Lewis County General does not have such services. Many rural counties are similarly without any inpatient mental health care facilities. As directors of county community services, Ruetten and Platz are empowered by state law to refer someone for an involuntary commitment evaluation, or designate people with medical knowledge to handle that within local hospitals. Ruetten said he rarely uses that power, and involuntary commitments of any origination are rare in Jefferson County. "When you do that, you're taking someone's rights away," he said. "That's serious." Hochul's proposal would lower the standard for what qualifies for commitment — making it easier for homeless people on the street to get swept up into the system. Ruetten said he doesn't think that's the right approach for the situation in Jefferson County. "It just doesn't make sense to hospitalize everyone who can't feed, clothe or house themselves," he said. "Everyone who is doing the work knows that won't work." He said that people unable to secure shelter or food reliably aren't always mentally ill, and those who are suffering from a mental illness aren't going to benefit significantly from a temporary commitment without some material change in their permanent living situation. But Ruetten said that there has been a definite spike in need. He said his department has been referred more cases of serious mental illness than in years past, and there are far more cases involving violence. There's also been a spike in the number of homeless people in Jefferson County — many of whom do need mental health care. Platz, who is relatively new to her role in Lewis County, said she wasn't able to directly speak to historic versus current demand for services in Lewis County, but said her colleagues who serve on the county Community Services Board have said demand is increased, especially for young people in the area. "It's not uncommon for me to hear about very complex, high need, high risk individuals who are struggling to get the support they need in our community," she said. "I've been in quite a few conversations about the behavioral needs of our youngest community members, our littlest community members, and those seem definitely to be more complicated." Ruetten said a solution that Jefferson County officials have developed is to rely more on a collaborative, not coercive, pathway to treatment. Provide always-available, low-barrier shelter for homeless people, engage in street outreach and relationship building, and allow for choice. "That works, that does what involuntary commitment and police pickup orders are trying to do here," he said. Jefferson County recently passed a package of legislation aimed at handling homelessness in the county — providing for 24/7 shelters outside of the cold season when the state helps cover costs with the Salvation Army and the New Life and Emmanuel Congregational churches, spinning up a street outreach program with ACR Health, and conducting a study on opioid addiction. To address wider mental health concerns, not necessarily including homelessness, Jefferson and Lewis counties are also putting together a mobile crisis unit, which will respond to incidents of extreme mental illness and personal crisis without immediately involving law enforcement. Those approaches are what Ruetten and Platz are focused on — ways to keep people in their community while addressing their mental illnesses, and giving people an opportunity to have choice and agency in their care. According to a source close to negotiations over the state budget not authorized to speak publicly, the deal that lawmakers and Hochul have come to will largely follow Hochul's original proposal, with a push to prioritize emergency medical services as the first point of contact for non-emergency pickups for evaluation, rather than police, for all pickups, and a requirement that involuntarily committed patients have more advanced discharge planning and outpatient service connections made before being sent out of the hospital. They also indicated the deal would cut the physician review process to require only one doctor or a physician's assistant and doctor agree that the patient needs to be committed before sending for a psychiatrist's review. Senate Majority Leader Andrea A. Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, told reporters after a Thursday afternoon budget meeting with Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, and the governor that discussions are ongoing on most all topics and clear legislative language hasn't been tendered on involuntary commitment "I could tell you a little bit more definitively if we had language set on everything, but all of these things are still in process of being worked through, and we will have something as well with involuntary commitment," Stewart-Cousins said. Ruetten said he had some concerns about those changes as outlined. He said that Jefferson County, like most rural counties, has only private ambulance services available, which can't be directed to provide pickup services for involuntary commitment evaluations. "They can't bill for the service unless it's medically necessary," Ruetten said. "I've tried this in the past with ambulance services, it ends up being so cumbersome or impossible that I don't use it. I wouldn't, because unless I can provide a letter of medical necessity, the ambulance service can't bill for it." Under state law, local police departments are required to transport involuntary commitment candidates to their evaluations. Both Ruetten and Platz said they're not likely to push for more involuntary commitments in their communities, even as the state tries to expand their use. "The transportation, evaluation and potential admission of someone needing these supports is not something that we take lightly," Platz said. "It can be an extremely traumatic experience. This is not something that myself or my colleagues take lightly. We'd much rather keep them here in the community and wrap support around them."
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chobani announces $1.2 billion factory project for Oneida County, New York on track for dairy boom
Apr. 22—New York will soon be home to the single largest natural food processing facility in the country — Chobani, the upstate-based yogurt and dairy foods company, announced with much fanfare on Tuesday that they are moving forward with a $1.2 billion project in Rome, Oneida County to create a 1.4 million square foot manufacturing center in the city's Griffiss Business and Technology Park. Governor Kathleen C. Hochul heralded the announcement in a press event at the park Tuesday. "Through this partnership with Chobani, we're revitalizing upstate New York's manufacturing sector one spoonful at a time," she said. "Chobani has been a major employer in the Mohawk Valley for decades, and this massive new $1.2 billion investment will bring more than 1,000 good-paying jobs to Oneida County — the largest natural food manufacturing investment in American history." North country Congresswoman Elise M. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, who represents Rome in Washington D.C., also spoke at the event. "This is great news for our upstate New York and north country dairy farmers as well as our region's economy," she said. "I am proud to welcome the hardworking employees of Chobani to NY-21 and am grateful for their commitment to our region." New York State has already spent $23 million to spur the project along, investing last year in infrastructure and transportation improvements at the park. Empire State Development will provide another $73 million in tax credits if Chobani hits its job creation goals. That means a huge spike in milk demand — officials said the plant will process more than 12 million pound of milk a day, sourced from nearby dairy farms, including many in the north country. Chobani sources its milk from the Dairy Farmers of America milk cooperative, one of the larger co-ops in the northeast with over 350 member-farms in New York alone. Jay Matteson, Jefferson County's agricultural coordinator, said he expects the Chobani project will increase demand for farms all across New York, DFA members and those in other co-ops, because the Chobani factory will require so much milk that the DFA farms will likely sell less to other sources. It'll dovetail with at least six other major dairy industry projects under development right now, he said, part of a push that's quickly boosting New York's dairy industry. Matteson listed a handful of major projects; a $150 million expansion for cottage cheese and yogurt by the Upstate Niagara Co-op out west, a $650 million Fairlife pasteurized milk project, also out west, a $150 million milk plant from Cayuga Marketing in Auburn, a $621 million cheese plant in Franklinville from Great Lakes Cheese, a $120 million project from Byrne Dairy in Cortlandville, and now this Chobani investment. In total, $2.9 billion is being spent on these projects, and that's expected to boost demand for milk by 7 billion pounds per year when they're all up and running. "That's huge," Matteson said. "New York is quickly becoming the dairy processing center for the eastern United States, if not the nation." That will require serious, and smart investments across the industry, and Matteson said if the state wants to navigate this dairy boom properly, it's time to start looking at barriers to expansion in the way for dairy farmers. "My biggest concern is, what are the barriers to farms right now who want to grow to meet that demand?" he said. "You've got two major ones." The first is the cost of production — and Matteson said there are a few policies that are boosting the cost of things dairy farmers need to run their operations. "Tariffs, regulations, and so on," he said. Besides the federal tariffs on almost all imported goods, which is increasing the costs of even domestically-produced goods by reducing available and rightly-priced supplies, Matteson said the continued cutting to the overtime threshold for agriculture workers in New York is also increasing costs. Every other year, the state cuts four more hours from the total hours an agricultural worker can work per week before hitting mandatory overtime. In 2023, the total was 60 hours per week before overtime kicked in. A phased-in reduction cut that to 56 in 2024, and in 2026 that will hit 52, down to 40 hours per week by 2032. The state offers a tax credit equal to the extra overtime costs for some farms, but that's a refund that farmers have to seek after paying those higher wages for a year and recently-closed loopholes left many dairy farms out of the tax credit program altogether. "Are we increasing the costs of production to the point where the farms don't want to make those investments to grow their operations? That's a huge issue and we need to take a look and try to fix that," he said. The other major barrier is workforce — for years, upstate New York has gotten older and less populated, and concerns over staffing have grown for manufacturing and agricultural operations specifically. Matteson said that besides the 1,000 jobs the Chobani plant will create, and however many hundreds more jobs the other five dairy investments will bring, the dairy farms themselves will need to find capable help, and they're likely to want to turn to migrant and foreign farm workers. Chobani itself is also planning to work with Empire State Development to create a workforce training program aimed at training and hiring people from traditionally underserved communities. "Farms and other (agriculture) businesses are facing expanded enforcement on farm workers," he noted. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has visited a handful of upstate farms and detained hundreds of people in the process — including a very high profile immigration action at a Jefferson County farm earlier this month that garnered national attention when a mother and her three children were detained in the process. Hard data on the impact of those high-profile arrests on the wider agricultural industry in the region isn't available yet and is unlikely to be fully accurate, but industry and immigration experts have said they expect that increased immigration enforcement focused on farms is likely to drive down the number of immigrants who work on those farms, document and undocumented alike. Matteson has long advocated for a change in the federal H2-A visa program, which authorizes foreign nationals to work in seasonal agricultural operations for a limited period of time. Dairy farmers and advocates have long complained the program doesn't work well for their year-round operations, and the program itself offers some roadblocks that prevent otherwise eligible and willing workers from using it. "We either need a revision of the H2-A visa program, or the creation of a farm guest worker program so we can have a workforce to help them produce," Matteson said.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Albany lawmakers come to deal on discovery in budget talks, passed another extender and left town for weekend
Apr. 17—ALBANY — Progress seems to have been made on changes to the state's discovery laws in the after hours of Wednesday. Speaker of the Assembly Carl E. Heastie, D-Bronx, told Spectrum News Capitol Tonight reporter Kate Lisa "discovery's done" in the halls of the Capitol on Wednesday night, after a meeting with the Senate Majority Leader and Governor Kathleen C. Hochul. Albany's leaders do not discuss specifics of the deals they reach in private regarding policy until the entire budget package is completed and presented to the state legislature for a vote. Heastie's comments came just hours after Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul, speaking in Manhattan to push again on her proposed changes to alter the state's discovery laws, said that talks were not completed yet but at the "five yard line," using a football allegory. On Tuesday, Heastie had told reporters he'd developed the "framework" of a deal on discovery after spending the Passover weekend talking with the five District Attorneys that represent New York City. Hochul, who was at the same time speaking in Kingston, Ulster County, wasn't quick to sign onto that deal on discovery language, and spent Tuesday night and most of Wednesday negotiating tweaks with the legislators. In her original pitch to lawmakers, Hochul had asked to adjust the scope of what evidence a prosecutor has to turn over to the defense in a criminal case, allow for less severe penalties than dismissal when an issue with the prosecution's conduct in discovery is found, and set a deadline for when the defense can file a complaint with the court regarding discovery. Hochul has argued those changes will protect the victims of crimes by ensuring the cases against their abusers aren't thrown out over technical mistakes. She's tied the issue with domestic violence, retail theft and other crime issues, and leaned on DAs from around the state to argue that the current discovery rules were hurting otherwise concrete cases. Evidence of this is thin, however; when a case is dismissed it becomes sealed, so the public and the press haven't been able to review any of the cases cited by the DAs or the Governor they claim were dismissed over discovery issues. And some progressive lawmakers have argued that goes too far, and would allow prosecutors to withhold evidence they find that could exonerate defendants. A source close to the internal discussions told the Watertown Daily Times on Thursday morning that discovery is settled, and lawmakers are moving on to the final few issues to settle. Lawmakers still have to come down with a deal on involuntary commitment standards, which those close to discussions say are less likely to be as controversial as the discovery debate has been. Lawmakers voted to pass another bill to fund the state government through to Wednesday of next week and promptly left the Capitol Thursday ahead of the Easter weekend.
