Ryan McMahon

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon presented some new ideas and talked about some old ideas as he outlined how central New York will rise from the pandemic in his annual State of the County speech Wednesday evening.

With gas prices continuing to surge in New York, state and local lawmakers in central New York have proposed cutting or capping gas taxes as one way to ease the pain at the pump.

Onondaga County is pushing back on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to wait until early March to determine whether to drop a mask mandate in schools.

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said Wednesday the seemingly random decisions about mask mandates shows one area government has fallen short in the pandemic.

Onondaga County is asking the state to come up with a metric to determine when kids can stop wearing masks in schools.

Contact tracing has been one of the methods for government to control the COVID-19 pandemic from the very beginning. And now it’s on the way out.

Onondaga County health officials say the focus in 2022 will be how community members can balance living their lives with the continued threat of COVID-19.

Local counties are logging record numbers of positive COVID-19 cases, and now many students are heading back to school after the winter break.

Onondaga County is urging people to get tested before gathering on Christmas, in an attempt to stem the spread of the more-contagious omicron variant of COVID-19.

McMahon has until December 12 to either sign or veto the Republican-drawn legislative district map. Nearly everyone who has spoken at public hearings say the process was rushed and politicized.