It is now illegal to use your cell phone to text, check e-mail or surf the web while driving in New York State. Governor David Paterson signed the bill into law Thursday. The ban also covers using laptops or other handheld devices to read, view or send images or data while the vehicle is moving. [...]
A federal jury convicted a former New York state judge Thursday of attempted extortion and attempted soliciting of a bribe for pressuring a lawyer to give $10,000 to his defense fund. Federal prosecutors said Thomas Spargo pressured the lawyer, who had cases pending before Spargo when he was a state Supreme Court justice in 2003, [...]
Gov. David Paterson is vetoing a series of bills approved by lawmakers for spending back in their home districts. Paterson says the state can’t afford them. He’s vetoing bills that would let several school districts delay repaying surplus state aid resulting from errors made by the districts. Other bills would advance millions of dollars in [...]
Three state senators called on Gov. David A. Paterson to sign into law a bill that would create a statewide e-mail alert program notifying people when a convicted sex offender moves into a neighborhood. But the executive director of Parents for Megan’s Law – a Stony Brook-based nonprofit group that provides the same service and [...]
The New York state Senate has passed 640 bills so far this year – well off the 1,794 passed in 2008 before Democrats took control of the chamber. The New York Public Interest Research Group says 554 of those measures were also approved by the Assembly and likely to make it into law. That’s down from [...]
New Yorkers are feeling pessimistic on the rebuilding efforts at the World Trade Center site. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 61 percent of those surveyed do not believe the first phase of the September 11th Memorial will be ready by the 10th anniversary of the attack in 2011, while 28 percent believe it will be. [...]
The attorney general’s office is investigating if Senate Majority Leader Pedro Espada Jr. submitted false statements in a grant application seeking $3 million from the state for his health care company. The state Department of Health confirmed Wednesday it referred concerns about the Espada organization to Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office after reviewing the vendor [...]
Hardly a day has passed in the six months since President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package without an elected official announcing how a chunk of the $5 billion or so that is coming to New York City will be spent. The money has been designated for a wide variety of uses, including road [...]
More than 1,000 people filled the Victor High School auditorium and 250 people initially left in the halls — listened on a speaker in the school gym to Rep. Eric Massa’s town hall session on health care Wednesday. The meeting quickly turned boisterous. People booed, applauded and shouted out comments periodically as Massa, D-Corning, took [...]
Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent much of Wednesday afternoon submitting to detailed questioning from attorneys in this Lower Manhattan office building. At issue is the FDNY’s hiring practices, the subject of a lawsuit by the federal Justice Department and the Vulcan Society — a fraternal order of black firefighters. “This department has never hired black applicants [...]
