radioNOVO News NY News Roundup for June 22, 2026

Good morning. I’m Codi Gaboff with your New York State morning roundup.We begin with a victory for consumers as newly enacted state budget laws establish strict, inflation-indexed caps on utility rate hikes across New York. The legislation explicitly bans utility companies from passing corporate lobbying expenses down to ratepayers, and issues residential utility rebate checks to offset recent spikes.Turning to transportation safety, the Crawford Area Transportation Authority has fired a regional paratransit driver following a viral social media sting. Officials terminated driver Grant Traister after a video by an online vigilante group racked up over three-hundred-thousand views. In the video, Traister appears to admit to sending explicit photos to an online decoy he believed was a fourteen-year-old girl. State police are actively investigating.In Central New York, the vice president of the Cazenovia School Board is facing intense pressure to resign following a disturbing arrest. State Police took forty-six-year-old Travis Longo into custody after a search of his phone reportedly uncovered child sexual abuse videos. Longo remains jailed.On the state economic front, working families are getting a massive financial boost. New York State is aggressively expanding its Childcare Assistance Program funding, with some regional allocations surging by as much as seventy percent. Lawmakers say the push is a critical economic initiative to help parents stay in the workforce.In auto insurance news, the state has officially passed a strict ban on insurance "red-lining." The new law completely prohibits auto insurers from utilizing consumer data like zip codes, education levels, or homeownership status to inflate individual premiums.And finally, if you are hitting the road, you will find welcome relief at the pump. Triple-A reports that average regular gas prices across New York have dropped nearly ten cents over the last week down to four-dollars and twenty-four cents per gallon.For more news, download the radioNOVO app. radioNOVO News is a service of Seven Mountains Media.