Affordability and the high cost of raising a family are key issues as campaign season heats up around the state, with mayoral elections this year and a governor’s election in 2026 that is likely to be competitive.

Child care is a sizable chunk of that cost. In 2023, for instance, infant care cost an average of about $19,500. High prices can create a substantial burden for parents, some of whom leave the workforce as a result.

The state helps many parents pay for it through a voucher system called the Child Care Assistance Program. In recent years, Governor Kathy Hochul and lawmakers nearly quadrupled the state’s spending on it, expanded eligibility for the vouchers, and increased payments to providers.

Still, the state spends less than half a percent of its approximately $240 billion budget on the program, and high child care costs continue to drive families out of the state and into poverty. Here’s a rundown of what the vouchers are, how they’re funded, and what might be next for child care in New York.

On the afternoon of Friday, January 17, New York City officials got an unexpected notice from the state. HEAP, the aid program which helps low-income New Yorkers pay their heating bills during the winter, was on the verge of closing, more than two months earlier than usual.

It was a jarring message to receive just before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The Home Energy Assistance Program normally doesn’t close until the spring. And just that morning, the state social services agency had posted on Facebook encouraging people to apply.

Upon returning from the long weekend on Tuesday — one of the coldest days so far this winter — city officials received confirmation HEAP was closing, according to emails obtained by New York Focus. New Yorkers who still wanted to apply had until 5 pm that day.

Applications closed for three days, until Governor Kathy Hochul’s office announced that she would reallocate $35 million from an unspecified source to allow the program to open again that weekend. The move eased the initial panic. But it’s unclear how long Hochul’s cash infusion will keep the program open, and key questions remain about why HEAP shut down so early in the first place.

Two weeks on, the state agency in charge does not see it fit to answer them.

Governor Kathy Hochul is facing fierce opposition to her overhaul of a popular but pricey home care program that allows people with chronic medical issues to choose their own caregivers and pay them through Medicaid.

The Alliance to Protect Home Care, a social welfare nonprofit, has blitzed the airwaves with TV ads alleging that Hochul’s plan, which charges a single company with running the multibillion-dollar program, puts “lives at risk.” The group spent $10.6 million last year on a public relations campaign criticizing the move — the second-highest-spending lobbying campaign in Albany that year.

But it’s unclear who exactly is bankrolling Alliance’s spending. That’s because its donations are being routed through another nonprofit that was created on the same day as the Alliance.​​ Only the name of the nonprofit — not the individual donors — appears in the Alliance’s lobbying disclosure reports.

The tactic could run afoul of state lobbying rules, which are meant to curb the use of pass-through entities that obscure lobbying funders.

When Jaquan Myers was sent to the Franklin Correctional Facility infirmary last summer, bleeding and hyperventilating, he knew he couldn’t do anything about the incident that landed him there.

At least three guards had pulled his hair, choked him, and smashed his face against a wall before pepper spraying him and throwing him into a van, he said. Before the assault, he’d filed grievances against one of the guards, who’d repeatedly denied him recreational time.

Myers was too terrified to file a complaint about the assault — especially because his only proof was his injuries. There were no cameras in the processing room where they beat him up or the van where they stashed him, he said, and the guards who attacked him weren’t equipped with body-worn cameras.

“Cameras make a big difference because they show both sides,” Myers told New York Focus.

Franklin Correctional Facility is one of the more than 30 New York state prisons that lack full camera coverage, according to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, even though the agency launched a statewide prison camera program a decade ago. Around then, DOCCS also launched one of the nation’s first prison body-worn camera initiatives, but as of October, only seven of 42 facilities had body cameras for every guard on duty.