News

This year's deep, prolonged freeze has sent frost as much as six feet underground -- deeper than usual. The result is a lot of frozen pipes. Towns, villages and cities across the region report problems with frozen water systems. The deep freeze has also been hard on farmers.

Kevin teRiele is a dairy farmer in Canton who is tired of winter in part, because it makes his work harder. "The biggest issue for most of us is frozen manure," he said.

  Onondaga County lawmakers will again be able to weigh in on the decision about the future of Interstate 81. Legislature Chairman Ryan McMahon will ask lawmakers to stand behind the option he believes is the best compromise among the plans being discussed.

The Cayuga Indian Nation will have to continue to sort out a leadership dispute on its own, as the federal government has declined to make a ruling.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has decided that on an interim basis, it will continue to recognize the 2006 leadership structure of the Cayuga, which places Clint Halftown as the federal representative for the nation.

More Fort Drum troops got official orders to ship off to Afghanistan. They will leave this spring and summer. 

Over 1,600 soldiers with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team will do one of three things in southern Afghanistan: One, protect U.S. forces on bases; two, serve as staff with the Train Advise Assist Command unit; or three advise the Afghan National Army and police.

The cities of Syracuse, Oswego, Watertown and more than a dozen towns and villages in Jefferson County are urging residents to run a trickle of water through a faucet to keep pipes from freezing. One of them is the village Mannsville, south of Watertown. David Sommerstein spoke with the village Mayor Lori Cashel. She says she can’t remember freezing pipes being this much of problem in decades.

Newly-elected Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie made clear one of his top priorities in his first news conference, where he called for passage of the Dream Act, which would offer college aid to children of undocumented immigrants.

Heastie says when it comes to helping young New Yorkers with paying for college, there’s a double standard.

Budget talks began Wednesday, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo met behind closed doors with legislative leaders to discuss school aid, economic development proposals and ethics reform. Cuomo’s push to reform practices in the legislature comes at a time when his nearly $1 million book deal is coming under closer scrutiny.
 

The Syracuse school district could be down a million dollars because of an unintended consequence of vacant properties being sold to the land bank.

Property tax collection is a major source of funding for public schools, but there are thousands of properties in Syracuse that the property taxes aren’t being collected on – either because they’re vacant or the owner isn’t paying. For those properties, the city has been covering the portion that would go to schools out of its own pocket.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly threatened to hold up the state budget over ethics reform and other issues, like education policy.

Now, a poll finds that voters would rather that the budget be on time. The spending plan is due March 31 and lawmakers return to Albany Wednesday to begin several weeks of negotiations.

A state wage board has agreed to raise the minimum wage for tipped workers from $5.00 to $7.50 an hour. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the change at a rally with union leaders.

Cuomo, speaking to the union members, renewed his call to raise the state’s minimum wage for non-tipped workers to $10.50 an hour in the state, and $11.50 in New York City. Cuomo says businesses are making record profits .

“Business is doing well, God bless them,” Cuomo said. “But it is time that they share. We are looking at a polarization of income in this country like we’ve never seen before.”

The city of Utica has climbed its way out of near bankruptcy to post a sizeable budget surplus.

Utica’s government is smaller, shedding about 100 jobs in recent years. "Fire had cuts, police had cuts, city hall employees, we had cuts," said Mayor Robert Palmieri in an interview. "So we really had to do some soul searching and employees now are doing two and three different jobs."

A program that paired college students with military researchers at the former Griffiss Air Base in Rome will now move on to other military bases across the country. The Commercialization Academy has helped students get a feel for what it’s like to be an entrepreneur by using patents, developed by the military, that currently aren’t being used.

This part probably isn’t news: It’s been really, really cold all month.

There are a few days left in February, but looking at the forecast  -- where temperatures aren’t supposed get any higher than the mid-teens, it’s safe to make some assumptions.

There is plenty of snow on the ground, but frigid temperatures are keeping people away from upstate New York’s ski mountains.

With schools out for winter break last week, President’s Day week is usually a key money-maker for ski slopes. But temperatures barely got into the double digits last week and despite good conditions, many skiers stayed inside.

Jim Hickey, who owns Toggenburg Ski Resort south of Syracuse, says it was “crazy” how cold it was last week.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has outlined his plan for greater transparency of state lawmakers’ outside income, and has made it part of his budget proposal. Good government groups say they wish he had gone farther.

New York state is among the bottom in the nation for residents signed up to be organ donors. Only about a quarter of New Yorkers have consented to being organ donors, according to the Finger Lakes Donor Recovery Network.

That ranks the state 49th in the country. But it has the third highest need for organs.

The low statistic has prompted a new advocacy campaign, hoping to improve those numbers, called Pass Life On.

The deadline to file your tax return is just under two months away. As many Americans file, they’re finding there are more questions about health insurance on the annual tax forms than ever before based on changes in place because of the Affordable Care Act.
 

In New York, and several other states, people who find they owe a penalty on their 2014 tax return will now have a special enrollment period to sign up for health coverage.

  The final number of New Yorkers who signed up for health insurance through the state exchange this year tops a half a million.

New York State of Health Marketplace is claiming more than 564 thousand new enrollees for 2015. Add that to last year’s numbers and more than 2.1 million people have used the state exchange for health insurance in the first 2 years of the Affordable Care Act.

Donna Frescatore is the Executive Director of the state marketplace. She’s says a close to 90 percent renewal rate for people with private health plans points to stability.

  The sixth largest shopping mall in the country says it's taking a recent call to attack Western shopping centers by a terrorist group "very seriously."

Destiny USA, in Syracuse, was not formally named by Al-Shabab, as was The Mall of America and malls in England and Canada, in a video released over the weekend. The video calls on sympathizers to the terror group to carry out the attacks. 

It all began with one Gorbel employee, says President Brian Reh, who was going through physical therapy with her daughter.

"The idea came originally from one of our employees who had experienced first-hand how tough it was to go through gait rehabilitation with the current lack of technology," Reh says. "We had a lot of great things we were doing in the industrial technology sector, and she came forward and said, What if we could apply this to the health field?"

As workers begin the job of demolishing much of the dated interior of the Hotel Syracuse, the historic parts of the hotel are being preserved -- including one piece of artwork that once dominated the lobby of the landmark hotel.

In the wake of the arrest of former New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on corruption charges, many legislators and the governor have floated proposals for ethics reform. Republican State Senator Joe Griffo (R-Rome) is pushing for a change he started fighting for even before this latest scandal -- term limits.

“Public health” is a phrase that can be heard seemingly nonstop whenever there is a health scare or disease outbreak. The current measles outbreak is an example of this -- a public health issue that makes headlines for days, weeks or months at a time.

This week on “Take Care,” Dr. Leana Wen discusses that public health is actually an everyday affair -- one that needs to receive more attention -- to better prevent and resolve such outbreaks. Wen is a Harvard-educated emergency physician, the Baltimore City health commissioner and co-author of the book “When Doctors Don’t Listen: How to Avoid Misdiagnoses and Unnecessary Tests.”