Climate Change, Child Poverty, and a Whirlwind Tour of New York Policymaking: 2024 in Review

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When I started at New York Focus just over a year ago, I was new to New York state government and the many opaque institutions and processes that comprise it.

Luckily, it’s my job to ask questions. I’ve learned a lot this year and hopefully taught you something as well, but I’m always going to approach this job with a beginner’s mind.

I started off 2024 on the climate/environment beat, often reporting with my colleague Colin Kinniburgh. My question was often — what is New York doing about the dilemmas of climate change and environmental degradation, and what gets in the way of action?

Colin and I teamed up on an investigation into the local economic development agencies that have doled out tens of millions of dollars annually to fossil fuel plants, seemingly putting localities in conflict with the state’s ambitious climate goals. “If we’ve got one level [of government] fighting the other level, that drags out the transition to renewables,” Assemblymember Al Stirpe, chair of his chamber’s economic development committee, told us about the tax breaks.

In her state budget opening salvo, Governor Kathy Hochul endorsed a move to wean the state off natural gas. But even with the backing of the governor, who exerts immense control over the budget process, the measure’s momentum came to a halt. I reported (again, with Colin) that the gas transition plan was killed by the Assembly which, helmed by Speaker Carl Heastie, has frequently been where climate policy has died in recent years. We reported that Assembly leadership ignored members’ requests to debate the measure.

Another reason it may have died: The main opponent of the measure was the gas utility National Fuel. While about three-quarters of Democrats in the entire Assembly supported the plan, only one in six whose districts were in National Fuel’s service territory did the same.

We also covered a bill that promises to cause a fight in future legislative sessions. It’s an effort to tackle a root cause of the climate crisis and one of its major effects. The Insuring our Future Act would ban insurers from underwriting new fossil fuel projects, and would require them to phase out their fossil fuel investments. It would also establish new protections against insurers refusing to provide coverage for New York homeowners.

During the legislative session, New York Focus published a few big budget roundups. While working on those, I noticed that both the Senate and Assembly had proposed expanding tax credits for low-income people with children. I had written about the expanded federal child tax credit while covering national politics, but that measure expired during the Biden administration, causing child poverty to spike. I wondered — is New York, which has some of the highest child poverty rates in the country, going to act? A small, temporary boost in tax credits to parents with children did make it into the final budget.

Then, in recent months, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers put forth proposals to send cash to parents of new children. “It’s the thing to do this year,” said Pete Nabozny, policy director at the Rochester-based advocacy organization The Children’s Agenda. Between those proposals, an incoming federal administration promising to slash public assistance programs, and the governor’s Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council’s new recommendations on how the state can cut child poverty, I’m prepared for a legislative fight over state spending on poverty in 2025.

The legislative session took me on a whirlwind tour of a policymaking process that is sometimes secretive, rushed, and full of mysteries. Who was behind a group called “New Yorkers for Local Businesses” leading the charge against major legislation to crack down on wage theft? (McDonald’s franchise owners.) Why were state Democrats backing a crime bill that was too draconian for tough-on-crime then-Senator Joe Biden in 1994? Had lawmakers studied the effects of a more than $500 million annual commercial real estate tax break before they quietly passed it at the end of session without debate? (No.) Was Hochul’s sudden congestion pricing “pause” legal? Why did the MTA’s own union, once a major congestion pricing backer, turn against it last spring? Who was behind a new political action committee spending to boost pro-Israel Democrats in state elections?