This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

An independent investigation into allegations that the Buffalo Board of Education member sexually harassed three school district employees found there was “no substantiated evidence” for the claims. But the report did find problems with internal board affairs, one of a series of issues that has rocked the state’s second largest school system during a chaotic summer. The turbulence led the state to install an advisor to help steady the ship.

Some New York City public employees are facing pay raise issues, but the members of the state Public Employees Federation are singing a different tune. PEF ratified a new contract with the state on Tuesday, giving approximately 60,000 members a 19.3% pay bump over five years. It’s the fifth collective bargaining agreement that Wayne Spence, PEF’s longest-serving president, has negotiated, and 88% of participating members voted in favor of the contract.

No matter what Greene County Tourism Director Patty Austin’s politics are, she must be jumping for joy now. County Sheriff Pete Kusminsky and a county lawmaker from Catskill told us that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, spent time in the county just south of Albany during their upstate vacation. They dined at Casa Susanna – an award-winning restaurant in Leeds (and there’s not many of those). That’s likely to boost the county economy, which is largely fueled by visitors.

NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo, AKA @uniongustavo on X, has made a name and a reputation for himself as a proletariat union electrician; turns out he is technically none of those things. According to the New York Post, Gordillo reported that he lives in a $1.5 million brownstone purchased by his wealthy parents, he has let his membership in IBEW Local 3 lapse and he never even completed his electrician apprenticeship. Looks like he’ll need to update his X bio from “union electrician” to “non-union non-electrician.”

Lisa Gelobter has a lot of questions to answer after nearly 1,700 calls failed to reach a Bronx call center earlier this week. She serves as New York City’s chief technology officer and commissioner of the Office of Technology & Innovation, which manages the city’s 911 call system. It’s still not clear whether anyone was actually unable to get an ambulance during the disruption, but the city is now investigating the breakdown.

Albany Mayor Dorcey Applyrs was already getting flack for having no idea about the city’s budget hole, despite having previously served as city auditor. Then it turned out the budget hole was bigger than originally thought. Now, Applyrs’ problems have only gotten worse as a midyear budget report projects a whopping $55 million deficit over the next 16 months. And that’s after getting a bailout from the state Legislature. Rough first year for Applyrs.