Howdy! It’s Tim again, filling in for Dan.

Starting off, we’ve got an interesting lawsuit filed against the State University of New York, which alleges that it illegally expanded its authority to remove or disqualify interim community college leaders.

Gov. Kathy Hochul issued her first executive order since April, and she’s taking aim at obsolete statutes, reports and boards.

My colleague Alexander MacDougall has insight into a federal judge’s denial of Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction against the New York State Gaming Commission.

Finally, if you’ve been around the Capitol a while, you might remember the decades-long effort to strip a requirement that SNAP recipients get fingerprinted. It’s finally passed both chambers and awaits Hochul’s signature.

A legal battle over who controls leadership at New York’s community colleges landed in state Supreme Court in Albany on Wednesday. 

The Nassau Community College Board of Trustees sued the State University of New York this week, alleging it illegally expanded its authority through regulations adopted earlier this year that allow it to remove or disqualify interim community college presidents or administrators.

The lawsuit, the second filed by the board against SUNY in recent months, alleges that amendment to state law gives local boards, not SUNY, the power to govern community colleges and appoint their presidents. 

At the heart of the lawsuit is the board’s 2022 appointment of Maria Conzatti as interim president. Conzatti was supported by the community college’s trustees, who later appointed her acting president, but not by the college faculty union. SUNY approved both appointments. 

In 2023, after a national search, the Board of Trustees appointed Conzattie as the permanent president.

According to the lawsuit, SUNY waited over two years before rejecting her appointment last year, without providing a reason. 

During that time, SUNY agreed she could continue serving as the college’s chief administrative officer under the state’s holdover law, which generally allows a public officer to remain in office until a successor is chosen or qualified. 

The lawsuit points to a March SUNY Board of Trustees meeting, where the board adopted new rules that would limit the term of an administrator-in-charge to one year unless the state grants an extension. 

The Nassau Community College Board sued SUNY a day after it passed its resolution. This lawsuit challenges the state’s refusal to approve Conzattie as the permanent president and asks the court to overturn SUNY’s decision to vote down her nomination.

The lawsuit filed this week challenges SUNY’s regulations adopted in March, as well as its attempt to use those regulations to remove Conzatti from office. It also focuses on whether SUNY trustees have the legal authority to regulate temporary community college leadership. 

It’s important to note that the lawsuit says John B. King, SUNY’s chancellor, filed a notice of adoption with the Department of State on May 27. However, the resolution authorizes King to promulgate final adoption of the new rule no earlier than June 1.

That timeline is important because it doesn’t set a deadline or require any specific effective date. The resolution isn’t self executing, meaning it needs to be filed with the Department of State before anything takes effect.

As far as I can tell, King hasn’t sent it yet.

When I asked SUNY for comment on the lawsuit, a spokeswoman called it “a desperate and frivolous attempt to distract from the important work providing world-class education and job preparation that New York community college students deserve.”

She added: “We look forward to litigating this matter.”  

The lawsuit repeatedly emphasizes that community colleges are locally governed and that the state Legislature intentionally gave local trustees operational control. 

Faxes and telegrams are out. 

In a swipe at bureaucratic relics, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s latest executive order, her first since April, directed New York agencies on Wednesday to scrub obsolete regulations. 

The order reaches further into the machinery of government than obsolete technology, although I was able to find a handful of interesting anecdotes in the statutes. 

For example, one of the arguably outdated regulations requires a county sheriff declaring a special emergency to first advise the governor by telegram, fax or electronically. Grape processors have to send the commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture and Markets the annual stated grape price by mail or fax. 

Among the biggest targets impacting everyday New Yorkers are regulations that impose significant compliance costs on small businesses or people without a clear public benefit. 

Agencies are required to identify reports required by regulation, policy or statute that are redundant or no longer used. In a news release that followed the executive order, the governor did not mention any specific statute or report.

A New York Times story about the executive order mentions a report prepared annually on children who hunt deer, which has remained on the books despite being declared unconstitutional in the late 1960s.

Boards, councils, task forces and commissions will also face scrutiny.

Agencies are instructed to recommend eliminating or restructuring bodies that have stopped meeting, no longer serve the public interest or whose responsibilities have been absorbed elsewhere. 

The order also pushes agencies to expand flexibility by identifying hearings and meetings that could be conducted partially online rather than requiring in-person attendance.

Of most consequential to everyday New Yorkers:

Agencies are directed to identify fines and fees that fall disproportionately on low-income residents or small businesses. They’re also asked to consider whether penalties can be reduced, waived for first-time, non-willful violations, or replaced with cure periods that encourage compliance instead of punishment. 

The directive formalizes a process already underway through Hochul’s EXPRESS NY regulatory initiative. 

The administration began reviewing outdated regulations last fall before launching the public-facing campaign in February. 

It’s collected nearly 4,000 public suggestions and folded portions of the effort into this year’s budget. That includes efforts to streamline housing construction. 

In June, Hochul unveiled the first package of 50 changes across 22 agencies, which the administration said would save more than 1 million hours of paperwork and compliance time while reducing costs for businesses and New Yorkers. 

I should note that the executive chamber still hasn’t filled my public records request related to those suggestions. Also noteworthy is that the news release that accompanied the executive order did not point to any specific statute or report at issue. 

The state worked with Recording America Fund, a philanthropic initiative aimed at changing state and federal government processes, Stanford University and U.S. Digital Response, a nonprofit organization that partners with local and state governments to modernize technology.

These and other groups helped New York identify thousands of potential opportunities for change using Artificial Intelligence tools.  

Hochul’s executive order follows other efforts to improve government efficiency, including in New York City and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. That effort sought to cut federal government spending through widespread layoffs and the elimination of wasteful programs, producing mixed outcomes. 

As Hochul rolled out her own efficiency agenda last year, her administration sought to distinguish it from the federal approach, saying New York's focus was on modernizing state operations, reducing administrative burdens and improving service delivery rather than eliminating programs or slashing the workforce.

Calls to make New York government leaner also predate both Hochul and President Donald J. Trump’s administration. 

In 1995, the Governor’s Office of Regulatory Reform, which was established in 1995, sought to improve rulemaking and permit-granting processes. 

In 2011, then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo created the Spending and Government Efficiency Commission to identify ways to reduce costs and restructure state government. 

The commission's 2013 report made dozens of recommendations, including consolidating agencies, modernizing operations and reducing the size of the state workforce. While some proposals were adopted, many were not.

From Alexander MacDougall

A federal judge in Manhattan has denied prediction market company Kalshi’s request for a preliminary injunction against the New York State Gaming Commission, a move that opens the way for state Attorney General Letitia James to pursue legal action against the company. 

Kalshi and other prediction market companies like Polymarket have exploded in popularity in recent years, their advertising now ubiquitous across social media and sports broadcasts.

The companies offer “event contracts” that allow users to speculate on nearly any type of outcome, from who will win the FIFA World Cup to what words President Donald J. Trump will say in his next speech.

The companies claim their products are not gambling, but rather a type of derivative futures contract under the sole regulation of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Many states and their respective gambling agencies, including New York, don’t see it that way and have taken legal action against Kalshi. 

In October, the state Gaming Commission sent Kalshi a cease-and-desist letter alleging violations of New York’s gambling laws. Kalshi responded by suing the gaming commission in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, requesting a preliminary injunction to pause the cease-and-desist order, arguing that their event contracts were the exclusive jurisdiction of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

On Wednesday, Judge Analisa Torres dismissed Kalshi’s request for the injunction. In her ruling, Torres said that the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), the federal statute that regulates futures contracts, did not exclude New York from applying its gambling laws to the company’s sports-related event contracts. 

Read the full story (free link)

Industrial polluters continue operating with expired air-quality permits

Following July Fourth weekend shootings, Applyrs announces anti-violence plan

Public records reveal apparent ICE lease at Newburgh warehouse

Fingerprinting rule for SNAP: Back in 2012, Cuomo made good on a promise. 

During his State of the State address that year, he vowed to end a requirement for food stamp applicants to be fingerprinted. 

At the time, New York was one of only two states that required the practice.

For years, advocates and large faith-based service groups had called on the state to end the practice, which they said needlessly attached extra stigma to the program.

They said it treated applicants like criminals and discouraged eligible families (roughly 30% who were eligible didn’t participate at the time). Studies at the time showed that the practice did little to reduce fraud.

In 2007, then-Gov. Eliot Spitizer allowed counties, which administer the program, to apply for waivers from the rule for various categories of applicants. 

A year later, lawmakers introduced a bill that would ban fingerprinting, which died in committee. It has emerged every year since, with different sponsors, and never reached the floor for a vote in the Assembly. The Senate passed it in 2010. 

Then, this year happened.

In an effort more than a decade in the making, both chambers passed the bill. It has not been signed by Hochul. 

In my reading of the bundle of bills since 2012, they seem to have become less about stopping an active statewide practice and more about codifying it in statute.

For example, the bill’s memo says that by 2015, participation in SNAP increased significantly, with 87% of eligible families participating in the program.

“Given this success, codification in state law is appropriate,” the memo says. (A02538A Davila, S07754-A Persaud)

Attorneys at second-largest public defense org in city authorize strike (Queens Daily Eagle)

Syracuse did not know high-risk sex offender worked in DPW because city doesn’t do background checks (Syracuse Post-Standard)

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Correction: A previous version of this newsletter misstated when SUNY’s chancellor has to file a notice of adoption with the Department of State.