10 chapter amendments to bills signed in 2024 introduced, including Climate Superfund

And Hochul says she will pitch more funding for child care in her State of the State.

Good afternoon — it’s Tuesday and National Tempura Day.

In today’s CapCon:

• Hochul unveiled her third State of the State proposal Tuesday: a new investment in child care.

• Chapter amendments to bills Hochul signed in 2024 are being introduced. Here are 10 you’ve been waiting for.

• Full list: nearly 2,000 bills have been pre-filed ahead of the start of the legislative session.

---

❗ CapCon Note: The 2025 Legislative Session begins tomorrow, Jan. 8. That kicks off about five months of budgeting, policymaking and politics.

If you don’t want to miss out on a daily dispatch from the state Capitol — including updates on bills, top lawmakers and more — now is the time to try us out.

We’re offering a free 30-day trial for new subscribers. You can get that here.

---

(New York Governor’s Office)

💵 Hochul says she wants a plan for universal child care in N.Y.

When Gov. Kathy Hochul was starting her career as an attorney in Washington, D.C., she encountered a problem that brought her dreams to a halt.

She was working as an attorney in the office of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat from New York, and was commuting to that job from Buffalo. That’s where she lived with her husband and children.

“It was an honor,” Hochul said Tuesday. “It was my dream since I was in eighth grade to do something like that.”

But she had to quit that job because they couldn’t find child care back in Buffalo for when she was away and her husband was working. That was her choice but it wasn’t a choice she wanted to make.

This is a story that Hochul tells often and particularly when she’s talking about state investment in child care. That’s what she was doing Tuesday.

The third proposal of her State of the State, Hochul said, will be a $110 million investment to build more child care facilities, with a target on areas that lack enough providers to meet the needs of parents. Central New York and the North Country have the highest demand, according to the state.

The state also has a cool interactive map that shows where more child care is needed in each region, though the data is a few years old.

But my ears perked up when Hochul said something else: that she wants to get to universal access to child care and is forming a plan to get there.

We know that there’s not enough access to child care in New York and that’s for two main reasons: the lack of providers and the average cost to families.

If you didn’t know, the average cost of child care in New York for an infant or toddler is north of $15,000. That’s half of what I paid for my bachelor’s degree, and I’m one of the lucky ones.

(New York Governor’s Office)

🍼 Getting to universal child care in New York

Proposals have varied on how New York could get to universal child care. The definition of what’s considered “universal” has also varied.

State Sen. Jessica Ramos and Assemblywoman Sarah Clark had a bill a few years back that would have fully paid for child care for families earning up to 400% of the poverty line. That would have been financed through higher taxes on high-income earners and businesses.

And Sen. Jabari Brisport had his own bill that would’ve enacted universal child care across the board, regardless of a family’s income. That would’ve looked more like the public school system.

Those two paragraphs really understate the scope of the issue. Even if parents could afford child care, they may not have access to a provider licensed by the state.

There’s a lack of providers, but they’re also often paid little more than minimum wage. That’s created a workforce shortage. And even if someone wants to open a child care facility, that takes money upfront.

New Yorkers United for Child Care said Tuesday that lawmakers should challenge Hochul on funding for child care and pressure her into higher taxes on the wealthy to create universal access. That’s easier said than done.

"New funding to build child care centers is a critical and welcome investment, but the governor must also act decisively to ensure families can afford the care they need,” said Rebecca Bailin, the group’s executive director.

“As the governor acknowledged from her own experience, parents — and especially mothers — are being pushed out of the workforce because they cannot find care they can afford,” she added.

Capitol Count features bills that move through the Legislature, including those introduced, passed and considered by the governor.

(Molly Burke/Times Union)

✒️ Chapter amendments are starting to roll in for laws signed by Hochul last year

A chapter amendment is when the governor signs a bill with a promise from the Legislature to approve an amendment to the new law at their next earliest opportunity.

It’s basically the Legislature’s way of avoiding a veto by negotiating changes they’re willing to make to the bill after it’s signed into law. It’s an IOU, if you will.

The thing about chapter amendments is that, unless lawmakers, the governor or someone else tells us, we don’t know what’s in them until they’re introduced as bills the following year. We might know some vague details but not exact language.

Chapter amendments were negotiated for several bills signed by Hochul in 2024. Those amendments are now starting to be introduced.

I went through the (long) list of bills introduced in the past few days and pulled bill numbers for the chapter amendments I thought you would be interested in.

1. The Climate Change Superfund Act