As Governor Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers prepare to head into budget season next month, they have a slate of new child poverty policies to consider.

The Child Poverty Reduction Advisory Council just issued recommendations to cut the state’s child poverty rate in half, as Hochul committed to do in 2021 when she signed legislation creating the council.

The council voted Wednesday to endorse a $9 billion package of proposals that it estimates would provide financial support to more than 1.5 million families. The most impactful proposal, to expand and increase the state child tax credit, would alone reduce child poverty by 23 percent.

New York has the fourth-highest child poverty rate in the country, according to the council’s report outlining the package. Census data from 2022 shows that more than 800,000 children in the state live in poverty. That's more than one in five kids — including nearly one in three Black and Latino children. Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse are in the top 10 US cities for child poverty, with more than 40 percent of kids living below the poverty line.

If you’re a payroll employee in New York state, your employer is probably required to pay for a workers’ comp insurance policy. Some, like New York City, operate their own “self-insurance” system.

The state Workers’ Compensation Board has cited the New York City Law Department, which runs the city’s insurance program, for legal infractions over 10,000 times each year since the pandemic.

From 2019 through 2023, it received three penalties for every four new workers’ comp cases it processed. Those included over 34,000 penalties for late filings and nearly 29,000 for other procedural violations like failing to properly pay claimants.

New York’s prison population has been declining for decades, and at a faster pace than the national prison population — from a high of over 70,000 in 1999 to about 33,500 today. As a result, New York shuttered 24 prisons in the two decades leading to 2023, and a provision in this year’s state budget allowed the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to quickly close up to five more. It has so far pulled the trigger on two: the notorious Great Meadow prison, just north of Albany, and Sullivan Correctional Facility, near the Catskills.

Meanwhile, some facilities are operating far below capacity. When the Great Meadow closure was announced, for instance, it employed more security personnel than it housed incarcerated people. Rural communities whose economies depend on a local prison are up in arms about well-paying state government jobs moving elsewhere.

How did we get here?

Of the state’s 31 districts that tried to pass propositions this year
specifically to purchase an electric bus, 10 had their measures rejected
by voters, according to data compiled by the New York State School
Boards Association.

Many district leaders, especially those in rural areas, say their communities believe the state is rushing the transition to electric. They say schools have limited resources to buy the buses — which are about double the cost of a diesel bus — and the electric infrastructure necessary to operate the vehicles doesn’t yet exist.

“The transition as currently proposed is not achievable,” three state educational associations declared in a joint letter sent to policymakers last year.