This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

The New York City mayor received high voter approval ratings, praise for his public safety plan in Albany and a convenient distraction from a potentially damning story. On Wednesday, Quinnipiac University released a survey that showed 64% of voters were optimistic about Adams. During his testimony at a state budget hearing, also on Wednesday, moderate Democrats and Republicans in the state Legislature lauded Adams’ agenda for addressing violent crime. And earlier in the week, the press frenzy over revelations that the vegan mayor sometimes eats fish turned a story about the questionable characters Adams dines with into dozens more articles about what he dines on.

The Hudson Valley state senator and Capital Region Assembly member scored a win this week after Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law their bill establishing the Office of the Advocate for People with Disabilities. A single state official will now be responsible for helping New Yorkers navigate the tricky social services bureaucracy following a multiyear effort to pass the bill. That’s a big change from the 2021 legislative session when a certain now-ousted governor was less keen about working with legislators to help people with disabilities.

No one’s saying that Nassau County executive’s hardline stance against the state’s mask mandate directly led to Hochul’s decision to rescind it. But no one’s not not saying that either. Still new to his office, Blakeman made it his personal mission to stand up to what he believed was state overreach on pandemic mandates. He even got the governor’s attention by issuing legally questionable executive orders to not follow the state’s requirements. Just this week, Blakeman’s actions landed him a short profile in The New York Times, which is impressive for someone who is arguably just a suburban elected official from the minority party in the state. So one could not begrudge him a victory lap this week.

Corruption is no novelty in New York, but there’s a special sting that comes with hearing a homeless shelter operator has been playing it fast and loose with New York City funding. This week, Victor Rivera, the former leader of the Bronx Parent Housing Network, admitted to accepting bribes from contractors and laundering money. Rivera is likely to face prison time, in addition to forfeiting over $1 million and paying a fine nearly as big.

Plenty of things have slowed down during the pandemic. One that hasn’t? The presence of illegal drugs on Rikers Island. In fact, New York City correction officers actually made double the amount of drug seizures compared with figures from pre-pandemic years – despite having a lower jail population and a ban on visitors. Criminal justice activists have pointed fingers at correction officers as the likely culprits smuggling in contraband, leaving Benny Boscio to defend his union members from those accusations.

Gov. Kathy “Change Albany” Hochul, New York’s biggest LLC fundraiser in 2021, may be in violation of state law that requires the identities of individuals behind certain donations be disclosed. The state Board of Elections has failed to enforce the 2019 “LLC loophole” reforms and reveal the identities of the owners of about 170 different LLCs that donated to Hochul’s campaign last year. On top of that, Hochul will be forced to respond to a subpoena questioning whether she pushed to have state regulators approve a cannabis company merger, after she initially declined to respond. And if that’s not enough, the governor ended the state’s mask or vax mandate, after neighboring states such as New Jersey eased restrictions.