News

Overall, sales tax revenue in New York increased for the first half of this year, but revenues were mixed across the state.

Across the board, New York saw sales tax revenue grow $177 million over the first half of this year, according to numbers tallied by the state comptroller's office. That's a 2.5 percent jump, but it's been an uneven increase, with some counties seeing big gains, while others decreased.

The village of Cooperstown is floating the idea of changing its tourism accommodation law, targeting nine businesses that it says were grandfathered into the village's current rule.

Cooperstown Mayor Jeff Katz says the law requires people renting out their homes to visitors to stay on site so that the property is monitored. But the nine businesses don't have to follow the law.

Recently, Katz says disturbances at several of those non-conforming businesses have caused year-round residents to complain.

United States Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is using a project in Madison County to highlight a new federal program that’s meant to promote infrastructure upgrades in rural parts of the country. The idea is to connect small communities with private money, in an effort to revitalize rural America.

Officials in Oswego County have ended their search of a collapsed clubhouse in Mexico without finding anything linking the property to the disappearance 20 years ago of Heidi Allen. 

"There was never any credible evidence that Heidi Allen's remains would be found here, but based on certain tips we did come here to make sure that we exhausted every possibility and left no stone unturned," said Oswego County District Attorney Gregory Oakes.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo confirms that U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara sent a warning letter to the lawyer representing the now disbanded Moreland Act Commission on ethics, as first reported in The New York Times.  In the letter, The Times says, Bharara threatened to investigate the governor’s aides and maybe even Cuomo himself for “possible obstruction of justice or witness tampering.”

When a patient has a terminal disease, 0ne of the hardest conversations to have is about when to stop treatment. This week, Lorraine Rapp and Linda Lowen, hosts of WRVO's health and wellness show "Take Care," interviewed Dr. Barron Lerner about medical directives. This week, they spoke to him how physicians and family members can bring up the topic about a patient's wishes for halting treatment. Dr. Lerner is a medical ethicist, author and professor at the New York University School of Medicine

Hundreds of people came to Oswego's Nine Mile Point Nuclear Learning Center to get a better understanding of how the power plants work and what employees do each day to keep the plant working properly.

The event allowed visitors, including nine-year-old Ethann Browne, to see first hand how employees are trained in its two reactor simulators.

"I already like researching nuclear power and learning much about it, but I'm here today to learn more about nuclear power from the professionals."
 

New York Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand helped introduce a bill Wednesday to combat the high rates of sexual assaults on college campuses.

Current statistics show nearly twenty percent of females who attend college are sexually assaulted. But critics say universities and colleges often provide either incomplete or false data. 

The new legislation would punish schools for falsifying that data while also requiring every school to release results of an anonymous student survey about assaults. 

Senator Gillibrand says these steps are vital.

Federal investigators, New York State Police and the Oswego County Sheriff's Department have been searching a collapsed cabin in Mexico for the remains of Heidi Allen, an 18-year-old woman who was kidnapped and murdered 20 years ago while working at a New Haven convenience store.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s opponents in the November election race are stepping up accusations over the ethics commission scandal and citing sections of state law that they say might have been broken by the governor’s aides.

Lt. Gov. candidate Tim Wu, who along with Zephyr Teachout, is challenging Cuomo and Kathy Hochul in the state Democratic primary, teaches New York state criminal law at Columbia University.

A new report recommends that New York simplify its organ donation process, because 18 people die per day in the state awaiting a transplant. Excellus BlueCross BlueShield conducted the study. The company's medical director, Dr. Martin Lustick, says they found that just 22 percent of New Yorkers are registered donors, compared to 48 percent nationally.

"Unlike states that have a high rate of registration, our process for registering is somewhat more cumbersome than the average across the country," Lustick said.

There is a nationwide racial disparity when it comes to breast cancer. The mortality rate is 41 percent higher for African-American women than Caucasian women. But a special program at Pioneer Homes in Syracuse hopes to put a dent in that number.

The idea is to get the 149 women over the age of 40 in this public housing development to get a mammogram, which can detect cancer in its early stages and can lead to better survival rates.

Central New Yorkers trying to help victims of domestic violence are happy that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has signed legislation that deals with the changing technology.

Vera House Executive Director Randi Bregman says the world of domestic violence and harassment has changed as technology allows people to become more plugged in.

"It used to be aggravated harassment was primarily making a phone call," Bregman explained. "Now it’s texting, Facebook messaging, email and the GPS piece."

The little known and underfunded Republican challenger for New York governor has been getting a boost from incumbent Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s troubles over alleged interference in an ethics panel. Rob Astorino has been doing his best to keep the controversy, first reported in an in-depth story in the New York Times, alive.

John Weeks discusses how the different predators and prey find their food. He also talks about how different animals communicate and warn each other of danger. He expresses that upon entering the woods, a person never knows what just occurred between the creatures that make up the forest.

Twenty-five family court judges will be added statewide by the end of 2015 to help reduce a backlog of cases and streamline the family court process. It's the first major addition of judges in New York in more than three decades.

Last year, there were more than 7,200 family court petitions filed in Oswego County, resulting in nearly 3,500 cases that needed to be handled by a judge. That equates to about 20 to 40 cases each day that are handled by either the county's elected family court judge, or another county judge as needed.

Despite a bipartisan bill making its way through Congress to keep road and bridge projects funded, there’s still concerns about the long-term health of the highway fund. A bipartisan group of lawmakers in the House of Representatives has passed short-term funding that was based on a budget gimmick. The Senate is expected to take it up soon. But several lawmakers in the region say Congress is failing voters by avoiding a long-term solution.

While more fuel-efficient cars and trucks may be good for your wallet and the environment, they may not be so good for roads.

There’s a movement afoot in the Syracuse area to get more people to install solar energy technology in their home or business.

Peter Wirth of Fayetteville installed solar panels on his home two years ago. And one of the most frequent questions he hears is,

“Does it work in central New York? Well, it’s produced almost 100 percent of our power for the last two years,” said Wirth.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in his first public appearance since a potentially damaging news story about allegations his staff tampered with an ethics probe, tried to change the subject by talking about economic development.  But the story continues to dog the governor.

Rob Astorino is working to keep heat on Gov. Andrew Cuomo over reporting the governor interfered with an Albany ethics panel.

Astorino, the Republican candidate for governor, made several stops across upstate New York Monday, as Cuomo made his first public comments since The New York Times reported Cuomo and his office tried to influence an independent commission set up by the governor to investigate corruption.

At the Baldwinsville School District’s administrative office, Superintendent David Hamilton works from an office filled with reclaimed furniture. He says a fancy office chair doesn’t help teach students biology.

Hamilton says that sort of frugality is what helped Baldwinsville score one of the best “bang for the buck” ratings in a recent report by the Center for American Progress. It ranked high on a spending to test score ratio.

Activists opposed to drone warfare continue targeting the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base north of Syracuse.

During a protest at the air base last week, local upstate drone activists were joined by some members of the Atlantic Life Community Activists, an East Coast-based group of pacifists.

Beginning in August, River Hospital in Alexandria Bay will partner with Syracuse's Upstate Medical University to bolster the Thousand Islands' hospital's services.

The goal is to bring more physicians to work in River Hospital's emergency department, according to chief executive officer Ben Moore. He says the hospital is receiving about $1.4 million in state and federal funding this year to bring in between six and nine additional physicians.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has not held any public appearances since a potentially damaging New York Times story that reported that his top aide interfered in a corruption probe when it focused on Cuomo donors. But on Monday morning, the governor is scheduled to visit the University of Buffalo, where the press will try to ask him questions about the Moreland Act Commission and his office's involvement.

Cuomo’s political challengers leaped on The Times story, that alleges a top aide to Cuomo squelched subpoenas to the governor’s donors and associates.

Although we may like to think that we will always have control of our lives, there may come a time when we are incapable of making sound decisions for our health.  Determining the best way to deal with those situations is difficult, but thanks to advances in medical ethics it may be a little easier.

This week on “Take Care,” Dr. Barron Lerner talks about the different kinds of medical directives and how they can help make an illness-related death easier on the patient’s caregivers. Lerner is an author and professor of medicine at New York University.  His most recent book is "The Good Doctor: A Father, a Son and the Evolution of Medical Ethics."

Click "Read More" to hear our interview with Dr. Lerner.

Using a list for grocery shopping can be helpful for remembering which food items to purchase, but is your list optimized for your health? 

This week on “Take Care,” Ashley Koff talks about the importance of selecting and incorporating quality foods into your diet.  Koff is a registered dietician and creator of the website ashleykoffapproved.com, which provides viewers with a comprehensive and thorough guide to quality eating.

Click "Read More" to hear our interview with Ashley Koff.

When the New York State Senate’s Independent Democratic Conference joined in a majority coalition with Republicans in 2012, it claimed that the arrangement would provide more up-or-down floor votes on progressive legislation.  In announcing a new intention to caucus with Democrats following this November’s elections, the IDC is claiming that the arrangement will provide….more up-or-down votes on progressive legislation.  How can both claims be true?  That question and others related to political power-sharing arrangements are explored with this week’s guest on the Campbell Conversations—IDC

This weekend a local Girl Scout troop is teaming up with the owner of the Midway Drive-In in Minetto to raise money to rebuild the decades old facility that was destroyed during a storm that struck the region July 8.

Midway Drive-In owner John Nagelschmidt says although the wooden screen tower was destroyed, it happened at a good time of day, when no customers had yet arrived at the facility. If it had hit later in the evening, he believes things could have been a lot worse.

While Syracuse Mayor Stephanie Miner wants the city to be a temporary shelter for Central American children fleeing to the country, there is a vocal opposition against it.

There are strong opinions on both sides over whether Syracuse should become a temporary shelter site for the children.

The mayor was interrupted often Thursday evening by a boisterous crowd at a North Side meeting with shouts of "legal!" and applause for comments both for and against.

It took back-to-back sessions to accommodate an overflow crowd of a few hundred.

The debate over proposals to store natural gas, propane and butane in salt caverns under Seneca Lake has become increasingly vocal, especially after a federal agency approved part of the project last May.  Last week opponents organized the biggest rally yet in the Finger Lakes village of Watkins Glen.

As the members of the Schuyler County Legislature left their meeting last week, the emotion, passion and anger of opponents of the gas storage projects -- and fracking in general -- burst into full display.

“Shame! Shame! Shame! Shame!” the protestors chanted.