CCC has been a vocal member of the Empire State Campaign for Child Care this past year, addressing an ongoing child care crisis with key opportunities to support families across the state. Part of these efforts included promoting a set of three widely championed bills at the state level that addressed child care affordability through support eligibility access. The bills were as follows:

• Eliminating the minimum earnings requirement to qualify for support; this bill would help make New York more affordable for some of the lowest-income, hardest working families.
• Decoupling working hours from child care assistance access; this bill would make it easier for working parents, including those in the gig economy or sectors like retail with fluctuating schedules, to access child care by not requiring child care assistance be tied to a parent’s exact work hours.
• Statewide presumptive eligibility: this bill would create a policy that allows families to receive quick access to child care assistance while their eligibility for the program is being determined, allowing parent’s to not lose out on potential job opportunities.

The State Legislature passed all three important bills with overwhelming bipartisan support which would benefit thousands of New York families. This month, Governor Hochul considered these bills and chose to veto two of them.

Both the bill to eliminate minimum earnings and to decouple working hours were vetoed by Governor Hochul this week. She did sign a modified version of the presumptive eligibility bill, but instead of requiring all counties to allow presumptive eligibility, this bill gives individual counties the option to implement presumptive eligibility. This will likely support some families in the state, depending on how counties react to it, but falls short of equitably supporting increased access for all families.

What’s Next?

While these decisions are disappointing, it is important to note that CCC along with partners in the Empire State Campaign for Child Care (ESCCC) are not giving up on fighting to create more affordable child care opportunities in New York for all families. We are confident we can and will continue to make progress in addressing the child care affordability crisis.

The ESCCC has outlined budget priorities for Fiscal Year 2026 that CCC will also be fighting for, both independently and within this critical coalition:

• Provide sustained and reliable compensation and benefits to all members of the child care workforce.
• Ensure ALL New Yorkers can access child care, starting by guaranteeing child care assistance (CCAP) to eligible low-income New Yorkers.
• Help eliminate barriers to accessing child care for children with developmental delays and disabilities.

The priorities also outline additional legislative and policy recommendations and expand on the above budget priorities. Read the priorities document here.

Here in NYC specifically, CCC’s released a 2024 brief contextualizing the publicly funded child care system (ECE) through a number of key data points including: population changes for children under five years old; trends in kindergarten enrollment; the reach of the ECE system over time; budgeted investments in early care and education (ECE) and changes to the payer mix; and estimated capacity for the current year. These data points underscore the important opportunity to not only serve a greater number of children this year, but to strengthen the foundation upon which universal access can be achieved in the very near future. We will be utilizing this data to continue working towards universal child care, informing investments and processes that will make this happen. View the brief here.

Why does this matter?

CCC and other organizations, service providers, and families have been highlighting data and impact surrounding NY’s child care affordability crisis as well as solutions to address the ongoing issues. We published data on just how unaffordable child care is in the five boroughs and have uplifted data on the state’s overall issue with unaffordability and underpaid child care workers—both contributing to economic stress for families across the spectrum.

Statewide, data was released in September that further illustrates why child care is such an important topic when it comes to overall affordability. In 16 out of the 100 largest metros where infant child care is more expensive on average than the average rent, two New York metros are in the top five: Syracuse and Buffalo. In Syracuse, child care costs are 25.8% higher than rent, while in Buffalo child care costs 22.4% higher than rent. Further, in the top 10 Rochester makes the rank at number 9 and Albany also makes the list in the overall 16. Read more about the data here. Additionally, in the list where the cost of child care for an infant and a 4-year-old exceeds monthly rent on average, Syracuse and Buffalo also make the top five. This data further illustrates why making child care supports and child care overall more accessible should be a top priority for the Governor and State Legislature. CCC and partners will not stop fighting to make child care more accessible to all families across the state and will continue to hold elected leaders accountable to address this disparity.