The oft-repeated line about Joseph Lhota’s new job as CEO and chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is that it’s one of the toughest jobs in New York government. But Lhota says that he thrives taking on challenges, and that the older he gets, “the more complex I want my problems to be.” more

The Legislature’s redistricting maps made losers out of a handful of Senate Democrats, who now find themselves living in districts represented by their colleagues. And NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly’s week – already pretty cloudy due to a storm over his involvement in an anti-Muslim video – got a lot more grim when news about an allegation of rape against his son surfaced. Here’s how the week shook out for the rest of the political world: more

A classroom of Bronx high school students was discussing John Steinbeck’s literary classic Of Mice and Men last week when a gray-haired, dark-suited visitor chimed in with the perspective of an extra 50 years. more

What happened to Jeffrey Sachs? The healthcare consultant, whose tenure on his friend Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Medicaid Redesign Team was marked by controversy, has been replaced by Joseph Belluck, a top trial attorney and Cuomo donor who gave more than $60,000 to the governor this month. more

It was one of the last of the group’s dozens of public hearings before drafting new lines for election districts. Dilan, representing the Senate Democratic Conference on the task force, was upset about a memo from a Senate Republican lawyer that advocated for a 63rd Senate seat. The memo had been placed on the LATFOR website late on a Friday, with no Democratic input. more

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan to cap nonprofit executive compensation at $200,000 may hit some New York hospital CEOs directly in the pocketbook – unless they can show good reasons for taking home their six- and seven-figure salaries. more

Welcome to The Notebook, the campaign and politics blog of City & State. We’ll be updating throughout each day with analysis, breaking news and the same type of insider-oriented coverage you’ve seen on our website and in print. more

Some of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s second-year agenda does not sit well with a crucial minority constituency. Members of the Hispanic Federation pushed back gently but firmly against it when Darryl Towns, the former Brooklyn assemblyman who now heads the Homes and Community Renewal agency, delivered a version of the governor’s State of the State address to them in lower Manhattan last week. more

Still chuckling over former Mayor Ed Koch’s cameo in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s State of the City video today? Keep it in your pocket! more

Year Two of the Cuomo era started out, surprisingly, with a bang. Not content to rest on his laurels, Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a list of big-ticket items in his State of the State speech last week. Among them: a plan to build the largest convention center in the United States, the legalization of casino gambling, a call to create a public campaign finance system and billions of dollars leveraged toward improving the state’s crumbling infrastructure. more