Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her fifth State of the State address from the Hart Theater at the Egg in Albany today. The Governor’s State of the State address is where she lays out her priorities and agenda for the upcoming legislative session and what she hopes to accomplish. The speech contained numerous policy proposals, and the Governor also released a briefing book containing over 100 distinct proposals organized in eleven main topics areas, including: making New York more affordable, public safety, protecting consumers and workers, cutting red tape, education, healthcare, housing, and protecting the environment.
The overarching theme of all the proposals was making New York more affordable. We are in the process of reviewing the briefing book and will send along specific proposals of interest. It is important to note that the State of the State proposals are broad based ideas that don’t yet have specific detail. We will begin to the specific detail when the Governor releases her proposed 2026 – 2027 Executive Budget proposal next Tuesday.
Some of the highlights from the Governor’s State of the State include:
- Universal Child Care: The Governor’s most high-profile proposal was to create a statewide universal child care program. Last week, the Governor announced the proposal in conjunction with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who included universal child care as one of his major campaign proposals. The plan outlined by the Governor would see the State funding the first two years of free child care for New York City two-year-olds, beginning in “high-need areas” and expanding citywide by the 2029-2030 school year. Further, the plan would pledge universal pre-K statewide, with pre-K fully phasing in by 2028.
- Auto Insurance Reforms: The Governor will introduce a series of reforms to go after the high cost of auto insurance, including cracking down on those who stage car crashes. New York has the second-highest number of staged auto accidents in the country. Further, she is proposing limiting damages for individuals who engage in unlawful behavior at the time of a car accident, including capping damages for uninsured motorists, impaired drivers, and those committing a felony at the time of the accident.
- Nuclear Power: Over the summer, the Governor announced that New York would build one gigawatt of nuclear power to help bring down energy costs and reach New York’s zero-emission goals. Today, the Governor announced that New York would be seeking to build five gigawatts of new nuclear capacity, one of the most ambitious goals of growing nuclear power in the country. Creating five gigawatts of nuclear power would be more nuclear power than has been built in the United States in the past thirty years. If this plan is successful, New York’s nuclear capacity would increase from the current 3.4 gigawatts to 8.4 gigawatts. Additionally, the Governor announced plans to train and develop a skilled work force tailored to nuclear power.
- Artificial Intelligence and Privacy: The Governor also announced a series of proposals focusing on regulating Artificial Intelligence (AI). First, she outlined a proposal to restrict AI chatbots on social media platforms for children, as well as setting the default privacy settings for children online to be the highest privacy level possible. The Governor also proposed prohibiting campaigns from spreading AI-generated images of people, including opposing candidates, without their consent in the 90 days before an election.
Now that the Governor has delivered her State of the State address, all attention will turn to her 2026 – 2027 proposed Executive Budget address next week. This will officially kick off the start of the budget process. Once her budget proposal has been delivered, the Senate Finance Committee and the Assembly Ways and Means Committee will announce their joint budget hearing schedules, which will last until the end of February. In early to mid-March, both houses will release their proposed one-house budget bills and negotiations between the Governor, Senate and Assembly will commence with the hope of having a final budget deal in place by the State Constitutionally mandated deadline of April 1. As we noted last week, it is likely that we will not meet the April 1 budget deadline for a variety of reasons, but we will keep you updated on the process as it evolves.
We will send a budget overview next week as well as share specific budget language of interest. As always, please let us know if you have any questions.