If the sea of about 84,000 spectators at Invesco Field at Mile High seemed like a lot to you last night, imagine how many arenas we could fill with a much less cheery crowd here in New York. About half a million workers across the state were stuck on the unemployment rolls as of July, according to a new report by the Fiscal Policy Institute.

Calling the joblessness problem “the other crisis in Albany,” the labor-friendly think tank reported yesterday:

The New York State unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in July, up from a low-point of 4.3 percent in 2006. Higher still is the rate of underemployment (8.1 percent in 2007, the latest data available), which includes people who are so discouraged that they have stopped looking for work, and workers who would like to work full time but can only find a part-time job.

The FPI analysis also found that New York workers' median hourly wage has been relatively stagnant since 2003, and dipped over the past year. Modest job growth did occur between 2003 and 2007, according to the report, but was “largely driven by debt and an unprecedented housing market bubble.”

Though Long Island is known as one of the state’s bastions of affluence, it ranked high among counties in terms of rising unemployment. From the first half of 2007 to the first half of 2008, average unemployment in Suffolk grew from about 29,900 to 36,700 (a 22.6 percent jump), and in Nassau from roughly 24,900 to 30,200 (21 percent). New York's overall average unemployment grew by around 13 percent; job losses have clustered in the finance, construction and retail sectors.

The trends signal a troubling change, but not a hopeless one, the institute says. The report urges Albany lawmakers to respond by reforming the state's unemployment insurance system (which currently doles out about $300 per week on average), to help families ride out the economic slump while softening the impact of eroding wages.

With the whole state budget headed for a crash diet in next week's legislative session, health care for the poor has once again landed on the table.

Paterson’s proposed cuts would slice the growth in Medicaid spending by more than $500 million for the rest of this fiscal year, followed by about $1 billion in 2009-2010. The proposal would target funding for hospitals, nursing homes and medications, as well as public programs like Family Health Plus.

No one would deny that Medicaid costs a lot; the state spends more per person on Medicaid than many other states, and the governor estimates that spending increases will account for about one quarter of the budget shortfall for the 2009-10 fiscal year. But critics argue that there are better ways for Albany to save money than scrimping on health care for low-income people.

The government's responsibility to keep kids safe is simple in theory, but, as Long Island communities are now learning, more complicated in practice.

The case of Leatrice Brewer, a New Cassel mother accused of murdering her three children, seems to have possibly driven an influx in activity by child welfare agencies. The first half of the year saw a nearly 30 percent jump in the removals of children from their homes on Long Island. The trend runs counter to statewide statistics, and yet coincides with the political fallout over the Brewer case and evidence of deficiencies in the local child protective services system.

It's hard to tell if the system is racing to catch up with a growing problem or responding impulsively to public pressure. Child abuse tragedies like the Brewer case touch on a continual debate over the ethics of foster care. When should children be taken from their parents, and could it do more harm than good?

Governor David Paterson issued a stern warning on Tuesday and Wednesday, urging lawmakers to tighten their belts and brace for spending cuts. "The era of buy now, pay later and later is over,” he declared.

Figuring out just who pays is, naturally, the tricky part. And in that sense, we can expect the current fiscal tensions to evoke the standard tug-of-war in Albany.

The landscape is already polarizing as the business-oriented Citizens Budget Commission calls for controlling government spending on social services while the labor-friendly Fiscal Policy Institute urges ramping up taxes for higher income brackets.

The three men in a room in Albany have agreed on legislation to give homeowners more assistance when a lender is about to foreclose. The Albany Times-Union says that the deal includes $25 million for legal services for low-income people, a 90-day pre-foreclosure proceeding and a required settlement conference between the borrower and the lender. We supported some of these measures in an editorial just today.

At the same time, New York's Chief Justice Judith Kaye announced that the courts will create a special division to handle foreclosure cases. The details of her plan are an exact match with what Gov. David Paterson had proposed in his program bill on foreclosures.

Cooperation and progress in Albany. Wow.

Assemb. Peter Rivera (D-Bronx), chairman of the Mental Health Committee, has e-mailed a Newsday editorial supporting his position to his fellow members. The editorial explains that financing for nonprofit agencies is being held hostage to industrial development agency (IDA) reform in Albany.

A union coalition is also running radio ads on IDA reform and sending direct mail. More on that below.

Assemb. Sam Hoyt (D-Buffalo), admits that he is holding the nonprofit side hostage in order to force reform of the for-profit IDA loans and tax breaks. Almost everyone agrees that IDAs operate with too little oversight, conflicts of interest and deals with companies that turn out to be bad for the public till. Companies are often not held to their job-creation promises, simply because no one is checking back.

Hoyt said in an interview that he is willing to negotiate with the Senate and governor, if only they would come to the table. "This may hurt my position to say this," he said. "But there is no single provision of my bill that I am not open to discussing."

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is different things to different people: for some sufferers, it may be relentless anger, for others, unshakeable anxiety. And for some, PTSD is an emotional deep-freeze, creating a wrenching disconnect from friends and family. In Albany in 2006, however, PTSD was a legislative pawn lost in the political horse-trade, as the insurance industry lobby bucked against New York’s landmark mental health parity bill.

As we noted in today’s editorial, full coverage for PTSD was removed from Timothy’s Law as a legislative trade-off to get the bill passed. So unlike other states with similar laws, New York mandates comprehensive insurance coverage for other mental disorders, like major depression and schizophrenia, but not PTSD specifically. Now, according to recent research, the mental-health needs of soldiers returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars could drastically drive up the social costs of the PTSD compromise.

One of Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi’s most significant achievements has been the “No Wrong Door” approach to helping human services clients. The idea is to put those services all under one roof, to make them more compassionate for those who receive the services and smarter for those who pay the bills: Nassau taxpayers.

One of the concerns was how much the county’s employees would buy into the new way of doing business. Here’s one recent clue that the workers are accepting the spirit of the enterprise. To help clients whose primary language is not English, the county asked for volunteers to take classes in conversational Spanish.

“Since staff were taking classes on their own time, we weren’t sure we would get a full class of 20,” says Mary Curtis, deputy county executive for health and human services. “The response was overwhelming. Over 200 people responded that they wanted to take the class.” That demand far exceeded the supply, but BOCES was able to offer a second class. The county chose 40 people by lottery to take those first two classes.

From the start, No Wrong Door looked like the right idea. So it’s encouraging to see evidence that it’s moving along well.