Category: Editorial
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Issue: April-May 2025
In northern New York, the election that wasn’t
Editorial April 2025 In the great campaign for the special election that wasn’t, voters in New York’s northernmost congressional district might have revealed just how much our politics have been transformed by the arrival of the second Trump presidency. But any new message from the voters remains on ice for read more
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Issue: February-March 2024
Editorial — N.Y. GOP flips the script on early vs. mail-in voting
Editorial February-March 2024 N.Y. GOP flips the script on early vs. mail-in voting Back in January 2019, when state legislators took up the question of whether to allow a lot more New Yorkers to vote by mail, the idea received overwhelming bipartisan support. A proposal to amend the state constitution to allow read more
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Issue: February-March 2023
Many reasons to doubt biochar firm’s promise
For the sake of argument, let’s be charitable and assume for a moment that the developers who want to build a new sewage sludge-to-fertilizer plant in northern Saratoga County are sincerely trying to solve a pressing environmental problem while making a few dollars for themselves.As our cover story this month details, the partners in a read more
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Issue: November 2022
Saving democracy might require more than electoral reform
In nearly two decades of reporting on elections and politics across our region, we’ve covered lots of ideas for making our political system more open and accessible — and for giving voters more meaningful choices. On our editorial page, our guiding principle has been that anything that gets more voters to participate in elections, and read more
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Issue: August 2022
For love of theater, festival must change
To outsiders, the heady creative atmosphere of a summer theater festival might seem an unlikely place to be worried about workplace safety. But theater productions depend on people who wrestle with heavy equipment, hot stage lights and electrical connections — and who work with power tools to build sets. Physical exhaustion can contribute to dangerous read more
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Issue: July 2022
On Pittsfield cell tower city’s leaders fumble
If 20 people were sickened by a toxic release from a chemical factory in their neighborhood, most of us would expect some public authority to take charge promptly to limit further public exposure and environmental damage. So when 20 people in Pittsfield, Mass., began reporting nearly two years ago that they were being sickened by read more
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Issue: June 2022
State’s new political map might help our democracy
It is a season of discontent for House Democrats from New York. In a difficult election season, they already were at risk of losing their majority in Washington. And lately they’ve been sniping at each other – even planning to run against each other – as they grapple with the fallout from a gerrymandering effort read more
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Issue: May 2022
Saratoga Springs new public safety commissioner needs to clear the air.
For Saratoga Springs’ new public safety commissioner, a big part of the job so far involves clearing the air. And it turns out that a lot of bad air has built up over the past decade inside City Hall and the city police department in particular. James Montagnino, a retired lawyer with more than 30 read more
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Issue: April 2022
In redistricting ruling, a glimmer of hope
As this issue goes to press on the night of March 31, a state judge has just tossed out New York’s new congressional and legislative district maps, casting the state’s nascent election year into turmoil. Justice Patrick McAllister ruled that the new maps, passed by the Legislature’s Democratic majority in early February and signed into read more