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Manufacturing highlighted by Secretary of Labor on SUNY visit

Kate O'Connell/Innovation Trail/WXXI

Welcome to the Tuesday Trail Mix from the Innovation Trail team.

State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has proposed an early warning system to monitor the financial solvency of school districts and municipalities.

New York state gained only 300 new construction jobs July to August.

The Environmental Working Group has accused the Cuomo administration of concealing industry influence on pending fracking regulation during a case currently before the Albany County Supreme Court.

Alarming national student dropout rates are in the spotlight this week in a major media collaborative.

Government

The U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda Sollis visited the Applied Technologies Center at Monroe Community College to highlight the $14.6 million grant to SUNY we reported on last week. The Innovation Trail's Kate O'Connell reported on her visit.

The Washington-based Environmental Working Group has been laying out its case against the Cuomo administration's response to its Freedom of Information request about correspondence related to the draft dSGEIS, as documented here by CourtHouse News.

Nine financial indicators will be the basis of the proposed system to monitor the finances of NY state municipalities as the Times-Union reports.

Business

Alpina Foods flicked the switch of its new $18 million dollar yogurt plant in Batavia reports the Democrat and Chronicle.

Why so many startups suck.

Congressman Brian Higgins, (D-Buffalo) calls on the DOT to remove the "functionally obsolete" Buffalo Skyway reports Chris Caya for WBFO.

New York construction employment figures are slowly on the way up, but still lag behind last year according to figures from the Associated General Contractors of America, (AGC) and reported in the Mohawk Valley Business Journal.

Environment

The Niagara-Gazette reports on discoveries of invasive species in the Erie Canal and efforts to stop it spreading.

The DEC has met behind closed doors with Watertown residents concerned about their proximity to the suspect New York Air Brakes former chemical dump, reports WRVO's Joanna Richards.

Energy

Work on a 48-mile natural gas pipeline in Franklin County from Norfolk to the village of Chateaugay is underway costing a little more than a million-a-mile reports the Watertown Daily Times.

The Associated Press reports on how the Department of Energy was in on the ground floor of research and development of fracking technology way back in 1975. 

Would income from hydraulic fracturing operations flow into the budgets of struggling schools?, asks Daniel Bader in the Utica Observer-Dispatch.