State lawmakers held budget hearings last week, and those from the agricultural community were not happy with some of the cuts proposed by Governor Cuomo this year. Assemblyman Bill Magee explains:
(Magee 3-6-14)
Magee said that each house will pass their budget bills shortly, and then the conference committee will get to work on the various pieces of the budget, which is due to be passed on April 1st.
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In less than 2 months, Sidney village leaders will know if their aggressive plans to get residents out of the flood zone, will beat out other plans for ran additional 3 million dollars from the state. John Redente has been helping to put together the final plans based on public input:
(John Redente 3-6-14)
The state will announce which community plans will get the additional funding in the first week of May.
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State police arrested Cody McNeilly of Binghamton with Unlawful Manufacture of Methamphetamine, Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance and Driving While Ability Impaired by Drugs. McNeilly was charged after a trooper located His vehicle running, in a snowbank with McNeilly asleep at the wheel. McNEILLY was arraigned in Town of Triangle court and sent to the Broome County Jail
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SUNY Broome Community College will hold its annual Job Fair from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM on April 10th in the SUNY Broome Ice Center on Front street in Binghamton. The event is open to the public, in recent years, the Job Fair has hosted between 60 and 70 employers.
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Upstate residents continue to be more positive about their current economic status than they are about the future, according to the Siena Research Institute’s monthly Index of Consumer Sentiment. The current pulse of upstate consumer sentiment yields a 83.4 index, up more than 2 points since January. consumer confidence dips to 68.4, up 2 points from January, but still far lower than New York City’s 79.8. Overall, the state’s confidence index fell 1.2 points in February, while the nation’s index rose by 0.4 points
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US Senator Charles Schumer said a standardized heroin database could help law enforcement and public health professionals throughout New York fight the drug. Schumer said police could use the database to discover heroin use patterns, helping them crack drug rings. Data about heroin-related hospitalizations and overdoses can also help police. Schumer wants the federal Office of National Drug Control Policy, to work with law enforcement agencies to set up the statewide database, to create a blueprint for the database. The office would work with interested counties, and state health entities, to build the database, to track heroin abuse trends, fatal overdoses and emergency room admissions
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A collection of Southern Tier labor unions, landowners and business groups are uniting to form a pro-fracking group. Southern Tier Residents for Economic Independence launched with 6 groups from the Binghamton and Elmira areas joining up, including the Joint Landowners Coalition of New York and the local carpenters union. Some of the same unions, and the landowner group, were part of a group called Clean Growth Now, which launched a pro-fracking coalition in late 2011. Health Commissioner Nirav Shah has given no indication when his work may be completed on a heath effects study on Hydrofracking.
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