News from around the nation.

Nearly 15,000 nurses go on strike at major New York City hospitals; Indiana lawmakers push protections during surgery; Kentucky's pension system has improved but funding gaps persist; VA advocates say, 'renovictions' displace residents, harm affordability.

Transcript

The Public News Service Monday afternoon update.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Nearly 15,000 nurses went on strike today at some of New York City's top hospitals, setting the stage for what could be one of the biggest labor showdowns in the city's health care industry in decades.

That from the New York Times.

They report the union representing the nurses says a strike is necessary to force hospitals to ensure minimum staffing ratios so that nurses aren't overwhelmed with too many patients.

They are also demanding higher wages and more security in hospitals to reduce violent episodes and shootings.

The Times notes that Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order Friday declaring that a disaster is imminent and that the strike was likely to impact the availability and delivery of care threatening public health.

Meantime, Indiana lawmakers are advancing a bill that would limit what doctors and medical students can do to patients while they're sedated.

Senate Bill 90 focuses on consent during medical procedures, GOP Senator Michael Kreider of Greenfield authored the bill.

Essentially the bill is trying to protect medical providers and others from getting in a situation where somebody feels like a procedure has been conducted on them without their consent.

Indiana law does not currently ban exams that patients did not approve before anesthesia.

Next, Kentucky's pension funding levels have improved despite nearly two decades of challenges, retirement experts say.

The state held around $35 billion in total cash and investments as of 2020.

That's according to pension policy data compiled by Ballotpedia.

Keith Brainyard with the National Association of State Retirement Directors says in recent years funding levels have significantly improved.

That funding level a few years ago was below 15 percent and it is now approaching 30 percent and is on a steady path forward.

Decisions made by both the legislature and the Kentucky Retirement System Board of Trustees, coupled with poor investment returns during the 2008 recession, once left the state struggling to maintain the funding needed to pay public workers retirements.

This is Nadia Ramlagon for Kentucky News Connection.

And consumer advocates in Virginia say the trend of renovictions, the process of ending a current lease to renovate a property, displaces long-time, low-income renters.

They say these projects also impact affordability.

Home prices and rents across the Commonwealth have risen dramatically across the state.

Between 2011 and 2021, rents in Virginia rose 24 percent on average.

Daniel Rezai is with the Virginia Poverty Law Center.

He says rent evictions can impact housing affordability at a time when housing prices have soared across much of the Commonwealth and the country.

Finding a new apartment to rent in a short period of time that fits their budget is becoming more and more difficult.

And once the unit has been renovated, It is no longer going to be rented at the same price it was before the renovations took place.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly half of all renters in the Commonwealth are rent burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities.

I'm Zamone Perez.

This is Public News Service.

Next to Washington State, where the minimum wage is once again the highest in the country at $17.13 an hour, advocates for working families say it's worth celebrating. 19 states raised their wage floors this month, but Washington is one of only six with hourly minimum wages that top $16.

Jeffrey Gustavuson with Firelands Workers United says there's an affordability crisis across the country and raising the minimum wage is an important tool to counter it.

It ensures that people in the food industry and restaurants, retail are able to keep up with rising costs at least a little bit.

The minimum wage isn't the full solution, but something that Washington should be proud of and that working people fought really hard for.

Washington state voters passed an initiative in 2016 to raise the state's minimum wage and tie future increases to inflation.

Gustavuson acknowledges the state has taken other steps to improve affordability, like implementing a capital gains tax and a rent stabilization bill, but he says more needs to be done.

I'm Isabel Charlay.

And New Mexico will maintain its full childhood vaccination schedule despite rollbacks by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The state's chief medical officer, Miranda Durham, says New Mexico will stick with the 30-year-old evidence-based vaccination schedule, noting the state regularly is a flu hotspot, has a high rate of hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses, and logged more than 100 cases of measles last year.

For all those reasons, we felt that the AAP schedule, the American Academy of Pediatric Schedule, was the one that was best for us, and that's the one we've endorsed for years.

The current Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has downgraded five vaccines as optional.

I'm Roz Brown.

Durham notes that the recent drop off in measles vaccines resulted in more than 2000 cases nationwide last year, the highest number in a single year in more than three decades.

Finally, grocery shoppers can't help but feel frustration when a staple like egg sees rapid price swings.

Egg prices are trending lower since supplies recovered from bird flu outbreaks.

But Brittany Johnson says record highs from last year are still on her mind as she nears the first anniversary of the egg cooperative on her Northwestern Minnesota farm.

How it works is a member signs up for $10 a month and gets a dozen eggs each week.

Johnson says at $2.50 a carton, that gives community members peace of mind in case the market unravels.

For us, people like to know where their food is coming from and they like to support good companies but those can be hard to come by for food products and so the natural solution is just to start your own and all of the co-op members have become my best friends so it's been really fun.

I'm Mike Moen.

This is Mike Clifford, thank you for starting your week with Public News Service.

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