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How Generous Partners Are Helping Saprea Raise Child Sexual Abuse Awareness 

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With operating costs climbing across the board, from utilities to insurance, Fuentes said it simply isn’t feasible to pay another salary to accommodate just two more children.

“I have an inventory of child care spots that I’m reluctant to use because it is cost prohibitive,” said Fuentes, owner of On My Way Early Learning and Childcare Center, which serves around 240 children under 13.

New York state has some of the strictest staffing requirements in the country — stricter, in fact, than New York City’s. As state leaders allocate billions of dollars to address the child care shortage in this year’s budget, a new state law could ease those requirements and unlock new day care seats at no additional cost to providers — but only if the state agency that oversees child care decides to act on it.

In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation eliminating a provision in a 2000 social services law that has prohibited the state Office of Children and Family Services from relaxing child care staffing ratios. The new law leaves it to the agency to actually change the ratios; if it did so, the same number of workers could care for more children.

State Senator James Skoufis, who introduced the bill in 2024, told New York Focus that adjusting the ratios is “more critical than ever” amid the state’s ongoing efforts to scale up its child care sector and provide more affordable care to working parents.

Child care advocates who oppose the change are concerned having the same number of staff supervising more children would increase the risk of accidents and injuries and fail to address a root cause of the state’s child care crisis: low wages for workers.

Supporters counter that looser ratios are consistent with national norms set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a professional membership organization that promotes high-quality early childhood education, and that alignment with the group’s guidance would offer flexibility to providers who already operate with razor-thin profit margins.

So far, OCFS has not indicated whether it plans to update the regulations. In a statement provided to New York Focus, OCFS spokesperson Daniel Marans said the agency is “currently assessing the viability of the requested ratio change, with the goal of supporting child care providers without compromising our commitment to child safety.” The law does not impose a deadline for OCFS to make the switch.

More than 60 percent of New York’s census tracts are classified as a “child care desert,” meaning that there are three or more children under 5 waiting for every available slot, according to the state Office of Children and Family Service. Meanwhile, more than 16,000 children are unable to receive child care specifically as a result of staffing shortages that have led programs to operate under capacity. While that’s not necessarily related to staffing ratios, some think easing them could help address the shortage.

“We can provide more resources to counties and to providers all we want, but if we don’t provide the very common sense flexibility that these providers require in order to effectuate creating more seats, then the money is only going to go so far,” said Skoufis.

Skoufis introduced the bill after providers, including Fuentes, expressed their frustrations to lawmakers over being held to tougher ratios than their counterparts in New York City, where staffing requirements are set by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Day care providers in the five boroughs must have one staff member for every five children between 12 and 18 months and one for every six children who are 2 years old. In the rest of the state, it’s 1–4 and 1–5, respectively. The discrepancies are even wider for older children.

Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi, who sponsored the bill, believes aligning ratios with New York City could help thousands of those families access a seat without burdening providers or taxpayers with additional costs.

“Child care providers are operating on such slim margins that they frequently worry about going out of business,” Hevesi said. “We were looking for a way to give them some breathing room in an incredibly difficult climate without costing anybody any money.”

Dede Hill, vice president of policy at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy, a social policy and advocacy organization, has a different perspective. “One thing that makes child care in New York state so high quality is because we have low ratios — and that’s certainly not something we want to step away from,” she said. Hill is a member of the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, which advocates for universal child care.

“I don’t think staffing ratios are the solution to the tremendous issues we have related to supply,” said Hill. The key is more investment in the workforce, including higher pay for child care workers, she said.

One reason providers are facing significant financial strain is that the state’s reimbursement level for its child care voucher program, which covers nearly all of the cost of child care for low- and middle-income families, isn’t enough to provide high quality care, Hill said. With providers forced to absorb the shortfall, many are unable to offer adequate wages: In 2025, the annual average salary for child care workers in New York was $37,675, lower than 96 percent of other jobs.

Fuentes, who has owned her day care center in Orange County for 17 years, said she currently has to choose between raising tuition for all children in order to pay another employee and waitlisting families even though there is ample space to serve them. If OCFS chose to align statewide staffing ratios with New York City, she said, she could enroll around 15 more children without hiring additional staff.

“There’s a child care crisis in New York,” she said. “If we can’t use our full supply of seats, then that crisis is just going to continue.”

For Heidi-Jo Brandt, president of a union representing more than 8,800 providers outside New York City, the flexibility doesn’t seem worth it. Some revisions to standards may be appropriate, such as the current 1–2 ratio for children under 2 in home-based care, she said, but a broader relaxing of staffing ratios could put children at risk. Research shows inadequate supervision is the main cause of injuries in child care settings, including drowning, choking, and severe burns from bottle warmers.

“While it could have a tremendous impact statewide, our concern is always for the safety of children,” said Brandt.

Some research indicates that high staff-to-child ratios and smaller group sizes are critical for children’s health, safety, and development, but data on the safety outcome of ratios like New York City’s is limited.

In recent years, as the child care industry has reeled from a pandemic-driven dip in enrollment and rise in operating costs, over a dozen states have proposed loosening their child care staffing ratios, increasing maximum group sizes, and relaxing other regulations to meet demand. Many states set ratios based on guidance from the National Association for the Education of Young Children; New York City’s ratios are roughly in line with the group’s recommendations.

Meanwhile, New York state has some of the most stringent ratios nationwide. It is one of just a handful of states that uses the restrictive ratios recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Public Health Association for 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds. Even New York City’s staffing ratios remain stricter than those in many other states.

Skoufis first introduced the bill after then-OCFS Commissioner Suzanne Miles-Gustave informed him that aligning statewide ratios with New York City would require legislation. At the time, he said, OCFS officials “made it crystal clear” they wanted to pursue the changes, though he’s less clear on their position today.

In a January letter to current OCFS Commissioner DaMia Harris-Madden, Skoufis argued that it is “financially unreasonable” to require a 1–5 staff-to-child ratio for 18- to 36-month-olds with a maximum group size of 12.

Hevesi said that he believes the agency should “act sooner rather than later” given the potential benefits.

“My instinct is that there’s going to be support to look at this and see what’s appropriate — but my role was just to take the handcuffs off and now they are free to do whatever they feel is appropriate,” he said.

Buffalo day care owner Emily Thrasher pointed out that New York City and state regulations differ on other aspects of child care: The city also has more lenient classroom space requirements than the rest of the state, as well as different age group definitions that determine other regulations. For example, New York City defines a toddler as a child between 12 and 24 months old, while New York state’s definition is 18 to 36 months.

Thrasher said full alignment with New York City’s standards would allow her small business to generate hundreds of thousands of additional dollars annually. That, in turn, would enable her to serve more families.

“I can’t even imagine how much that would compound for larger day care centers,” she said. “We could help more families, open more slots, pay our staff more. … The changes seem small, but it would make the biggest difference.”

She gave the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which had custody of her son, all the documents it requested — identification, a letter from her employer, paystubs. She got fingerprinted and let federal workers inspect her home. Then she waited. In the interim, Maria was only able to visit her son, Maykel, for two hours roughly every 15 days. She felt like she was living for those two hours, she said.

Months passed, and Maria grew more and more concerned. Maykel’s clothes and shoes were always dirty, and he told her he was afraid of being deported, she said. In March, a caseworker called with an update.

“You know that paperwork you sent — the letters, the checks, all that?” she recalled him saying. “Now it’s all expired.” (ORR policies say certain required documents are only valid for 60 or 90 days.) He told her she’d have to submit new documents before getting her son back.

Maria reunited with Maykel in late March — after she sued. She hired an attorney, Reuben Kerben, whose firm filed a petition alleging that ORR’s refusal to release Maykel amounted to illegal detention. Before a judge could rule on the petition, the agency finally released him and his five cousins.

“I brought him home with me to hug him, feed him, buy him clothes — to do everything the way it should be done,” she said.

Maria and Maykel, whom New York Focus is identifying only by their first names to avoid jeopardizing their ongoing immigration cases, are among a growing number of families in New York and across the country fighting the government to release their children from monthslong detentions in shelter facilities.

In most of these cases, children give themselves up to immigration authorities after crossing the southern border without adults in the hopes of uniting with parents or other family already in the US. The reunification process used to take about a month, but President Donald Trump’s administration imposed new vetting procedures for guardians.

Now, reunification drags out for so long that families question whether the government intends to release their children at all: The average length of stay in ORR shelters hit about 200 days in March, up from 30 days in fiscal year 2024. The Trump administration contends that stricter vetting protects children from abuse and trafficking, but advocates believe it’s intended to deter new arrivals, intimidate family members, and expose them to immigration enforcement.

Like Maria, desperate family members have turned to the courts to get their children out of government custody. They’ve started filing habeas corpus petitions, which allege that the prolonged shelter stays amount to unlawful detention. Such petitions have become adult immigrants’ best hope of escaping Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention since the second Trump administration all but eliminated bond hearings. Now, attorneys are using them to get unaccompanied immigrant kids out of ORR shelters — something that was almost unheard of prior to last year, several said.

Across the country, lawyers have filed habeas petitions for at least four dozen kids in ORR custody since last year, according to a New York Focus review of federal court documents and interviews with attorneys. For some of the kids, it was their second time in ORR custody: The agency re-detained them after a run-in with ICE and put their previously approved sponsor through additional vetting.

The tally includes at least six kids in ORR custody in New York City: Maykel and three of his cousins, as well as two siblings from Mexico, ages 9 and 17, who spent more than seven months in custody.

All of Maykel’s cousins have now been released to their parents.

“We completed everything they asked of us,” said Luis, one of Maria’s brothers, whose 3-year-old son was confined with Maykel. “Even then, we couldn’t get them out.” Like Maria, he only got his son home after his lawyer filed a habeas petition.

“With each passing day, it became more and more difficult,” he said.

The Trump administration’s new vetting procedures for guardians of unaccompanied kids have made lawsuits necessary, attorneys and advocates for immigrant youth say.

Family members trying to reunite with their children are required to submit to DNA testing and fingerprinting. Guardians also need to show identification documents that are difficult for undocumented immigrants to obtain. They must attend in-person appointments to verify their documents, sometimes at ICE offices — a risk for undocumented parents or those seeking asylum, as the Trump administration rescinded Biden-era rules blocking ORR from sharing sponsors’ information with immigration enforcement authorities. The California Newsroom reported that more than 100 people have been arrested while trying to get their kids out of ORR custody since last year.

The new policies also allow ORR, which falls under the federal Department of Health and Human Services, to disqualify potential sponsors based on their immigration status, making it potentially impossible for some families to qualify as sponsors for their children.

“It has come to the point where ORR is not functioning as it was intended,” said Becky Wolozin, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. “It has in large part become an arm of immigration enforcement, and much like for adults, one of the only ways for a child to be released to their family is to bring a habeas at this point.”

The Trump administration has framed the new policies as a necessary corrective to its predecessor’s looser vetting standards. As the number of unaccompanied children traveling to the United States shot up after the Covid pandemic, the Biden administration pushed to speed up the sponsor vetting process to get kids out of crowded shelters more quickly. As a result, many minors wound up working in factories, slaughterhouses, hotels, and construction sites, The New York Times reported.

Immigration attorneys say the new vetting procedures are a pretext to gather information to potentially arrest sponsors. Maykel’s aunt, Blanca, was briefly detained by ICE at her identification check appointment in March as she sought to gain custody of her sons Stiven, eight, and Jhon, 13, she said. That incident spurred the family to hire their attorney, who decided to file the habeas petitions.

The six cousins, ranging in age from 3-year-old Eithan to 15-year-old Lizeth, left Ecuador last fall, after the home where they lived with their grandmother was robbed. They told New York Focus they decided to make the journey to join their parents — who arrived in New York City over the last several years — without telling them.

Lizeth, who stepped into the role of surrogate mother to her younger cousins, said the same hope motivated them as they trekked through the jungle and later as they spent months living with a foster mother.

“Our goal was simply to reach our parents,” Lizeth said. “When we were hungry, when we were wading through the rivers, when we were most struggling, reaching our parents was the only thing on our minds.”

When the children reached the southern border, immigration officials apprehended them and turned them over to ORR, as federal law requires. That agency houses kids by contracting with mostly state-licensed shelter and foster organizations, including more than a dozen in New York in recent years.

The kids traveled by plane to New York City and moved into a room in a foster mother’s apartment, only about 10 miles from their parents in Corona. That was when the adults started submitting paperwork, hoping to bring them home.

“Months passed, days, weeks,” said Luis. “As a father, I was in a state of desperation: What more can I do? Because we had given them all the documents they asked for and more.”

In court filings before the kids were released, ORR argued that the vetting process was still playing out and that the agency had agreed to expedite analysis of the DNA testing, after which it could reach a decision. The Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to questions about the case or about delays more broadly.

As ORR scrutinizes their potential sponsors, kids must go to immigration court, sometimes without representation, to answer a judge’s questions about their experiences with the process. On a recent Tuesday morning, a teenage boy wearing headphones appeared on the screen inside Judge Lisa Ling’s courtroom on Varick Street in Manhattan. He sat at what appeared to be a well-used office cubicle, shifting his weight in the black desk chair as he waited. Ling asked what was going on with his reunification.

“It’s a bit slow,” he said in Spanish.

Ling assigned him another hearing in three weeks.

Many kids who are released from ORR custody get out without a habeas petition. In March, 228 children and teens were released to sponsors around the country, according to federal data. But attorneys said they no longer trust the agency to handle the cases, after encountering unexplained delays, even when sponsors complete every step, and hearing about sponsors being arrested by ICE during the process.

The nonprofit Center for Family Representation in New York City has set up what it calls a “new family reunification project” to help parents navigate the process. Zoe Schonfeld, attorney-in-charge of the immigration practice, said the project is currently representing 10 parents with children in ORR custody. They talk parents through every step of the process, explain the risks, and push back on requirements like appointments at federal Department of Homeland Security offices.

“But we can’t assure them that as a result of working to get their kids back, they won’t face detention,” Schonfeld said.

Knowing that their families are struggling or in danger of deportation worsens the toll the lengthy detentions take on children, said Emily Norman, East Coast regional director for Kids in Need of Defense, which provides legal representation for unaccompanied immigrant children.

“There’s anxiety and depression, I think a feeling of helplessness when it’s not clear why they’re not being let out,” Norman said. “Kids feel a lot of pressure and worry over risks that they’re putting their family members in.”

In sworn affidavits, Luis and the other parents said adults told their children that their parents would be deported if they didn’t obey the facility rules. The children told New York Focus they rarely went outside while in ORR custody, except to travel from their foster home to the foster facility, which was operated by the New York-based nonprofit Cayuga Centers. They cried during visits with their parents.

Cayuga Centers declined to comment for this story.

One morning, about a week after their attorneys filed the habeas petitions, Maria got a call from Cayuga Centers: “Come get your son.” The results of her DNA test had come through, and ORR had approved the children’s release. That evening, all of the cousins and their parents celebrated over fish soup, ribs, and cake at an Ecuadorian restaurant in Queens.

The Trump administration has asked the court to dismiss their habeas cases on the grounds that they are now moot. Kerben, their attorney, is opposing that, aiming to keep fighting for a judgment against the government. The cases remain open.

“I wouldn’t want other kids to suffer like our kids suffered,” Maria said. “I want them to get out, to get help, to reunite with their families.”

Under a 2021 law, an incarcerated person with minor children can request what’s called a “proximity transfer” to the closest appropriate prison to their home. Shawna and Artamion quickly filed for one to get him closer, but Moore said they didn’t hear anything back for months.

She learned in January 2025 that the request was approved, but now, more than a year later, Artamion is still in Green Haven.

Moore’s experience isn’t unusual. Research by New York Focus found that the law’s implementation has slowed in recent years. The percentage of “proximity transfers” granted has dropped sharply, from nearly 40 percent of those requested in 2023 to just 20 percent last year.

One-third of the New York prison population has minor children. Research has found that regular visitation can reduce recidivism by as much as 26 percent, often by deepening family ties. It can also better the lives of children with incarcerated parents, reducing their feelings of abandonment and anxiety while improving their well-being, self-esteem, and school behavior.

For Moore, the five-hour drive and overnight stay has made it hard to visit her husband, who is serving a lengthy sentence for murder in the second degree. She is self-employed and a driver for Uber and Lyft. She only gets to see her husband once every two months or so. Their 11- and 17-year old children haven’t seen their dad since November 2025.

“They keep asking all the time when we’re going there, but it’s just such a hassle,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for over a year just to get him moved.”

Each time Moore calls the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision or his assigned counselor, she said she is told the same thing: DOCCS is waiting for a bed to open up. They can’t say if and where her husband will be moved.

Attica has the capacity to house 2,143 prisoners. As of late April, there were 1,846 people incarcerated there, according to DOCCS documents. Thomas Mailey, a spokesperson for DOCCS, said the agency “does not comment on individual transfer request cases” but added that staffing shortages may cause delays. The agency “closely monitors all available beds” and “makes every effort to process transfers as quickly as possible,” he said.

Meanwhile, many prisoners face involuntary transfers. Incarcerated people have described feeling insecurity and anxiety during these moves, which may take multiple days and include multiple stops, even for small distances. Out of 96 family members and loved ones of incarcerated individuals who shared their experiences with New York Focus through a survey, 41 said that their loved one had been transferred more than five times. Twenty-one said the repeated transfers made it harder to maintain contact as their loved one was moved further away from them.

There’s no limit to the number of times a prisoner can be transferred in New York state.

Also known as April’s Law, the 2021 Proximity Law was prompted in part by a teenager’s appeal to a Brooklyn lawmaker nearly a decade before. It requires DOCCS to consider the location of children when placing a parent in prison or conducting transfers.

In the first year of the law’s implementation, the agency allowed more than 1,553 proximity transfers out of 5,987 requests. The number has plummeted since then. Between May 2024 and June 2025, only 870 incarcerated people with minor children were granted their proximity requests out of a total of 4,349 incarcerated people who applied.

In its most recent report on the bill, DOCCS wrote that a corrections officers strike last year contributed to reduced and delayed transfer requests. Proximity requests can now take more than 18 months to process, depending on whether there is a bed available at the facility the person requests and a seat on the transport bus.

Kevin Nelson, a staff attorney in the Family Matters Unit at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, a nonprofit legal services organization, said that online “incarcerated profile reports” often show open beds in the facilities to which people hope to transfer, even when DOCCS has said there aren’t any. “I see a lot of clients who would be going to the general population, who are still being told that available bed space is likely a factor delaying their transfer.”

Mailey, the DOCCS spokesperson, said that while the agency monitors available beds, moving quickly isn’t always possible. “Due to staffing shortages and the ongoing state of emergency, which results in unstaffed beds, transfers between facilities are taking longer to complete,” he said.

When the agency improves staffing levels, Mailey said, “facilities will be better positioned to facilitate transfers more efficiently.” He noted that “aggressive” recruiting efforts are in the works.

DOCCS reviews proximity requests on a case-by-case basis, considering factors such as facility capacity, security classification, programming needs, and the best interests of the child. Requests are denied if, for instance, there are any crimes against the child or children in question or an active order of protection involving the children or the custodial parent or guardian.

The incarcerated person can’t be serving a disciplinary confinement sanction or attending a specialized treatment program, and must be more than five months away from a scheduled parole board appearance or release.

In its 2025 report on the legislation, DOCCS broke down why it cancelled or rejected 275 proximity requests. Some requests were placed too close to a parole board hearing, for example, or were withdrawn by the requester. But for the remaining 3,200 people, no explicit reason was outlined. When asked to explain the missing information, Mailey said that “requests can remain pending for a number of reasons including incomplete information and a thorough evaluation of the interest of the children involved. Some of this information is confidential and cannot be shared publicly.”

Former Democratic state Senator David Carlucci, who co-sponsored April’s bill, called the data New York Focus shared “deeply troubling,” noting in an email that it’s “not what any of us who co-sponsored this legislation intended.”

“If DOCCS is approving fewer than one in five proximity requests and cannot account for why the vast majority are being denied,” Carlucci wrote, “that is a transparency failure and an accountability failure.”

Nelson at Prisoners’ Legal Services said he has received 212 complaints from prisoners regarding proximity transfers.

Some said they never received documents that the non-incarcerated guardian needed to sign, Nelson explained. In other cases, DOCCS wrongly used an expired order of protection as justification for rejecting a transfer. Even if a court has permitted visitation or contact with the child, the department may still deny a proximity transfer.

Under certain conditions, including significant disciplinary infractions, DOCCS can initiate a reverse transfer.

That’s what happened to Devon Callicutt, 35, who is serving a life sentence without parole at Elmira Correctional Facility for a murder during a robbery. His wife, Shinasha Bowen, lives in Albany, more than a three-hour drive from Elmira, which is close to the Pennsylvania border. Callicutt requested to be closer to Bowen and her children in November 2023. Within a month, he was transferred to Green Haven Correctional Facility, an hour-and-a-half away.

“It was everything,” Bowen said. “The fact that he was closer, so I didn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn.” Bowen takes her children, 12, 17, and 18, with her to see him. “They love seeing him,” she said. “It’s important they see him.”

But after getting into a fight with a fellow prisoner, Callicutt was sent to Upstate Correctional Facility, then to Clinton Correctional Facility, and eventually back to Elmira. Now Bowen gets up at 2 a.m. to ensure she gets to the prison early enough to get a good spot in line. New York’s maximum security prisons used to allow daily visitation. Since last year’s wildcat strike, visits at most prisons in New York are still limited to one weekend day per incarcerated person.

After a reverse transfer, an incarcerated person has to wait at least a year for a proximity transfer. Callicutt requested another transfer in October 2025. He and his family are still waiting.

Transfers for involuntary reasons — such as disciplinary action, programming, or a prison’s staffing needs — often upend proximity requests. Only one transfer can be in process at any given time.

Proximity transfers are “just a drop in a very large bucket,” explained Iolanthe Brooks, a PhD candidate in sociology at Northwestern University who analyzed DOCCS transfer data from 2020 to 2022.

A prisoner in good standing may also request a “preference transfer.” Brooks’s analysis showed that requested transfers brought incarcerated New Yorkers an average of 147 miles closer to home, but transfers for other reasons moved incarcerated people an average of 29 miles farther away from their county of conviction.

“We see that for those transfers, on average, people are actually getting moved farther from home, which is the opposite, of course, of the intent of these closer-to-home laws,” Brooks said.

Nearly 65 percent of incarcerated people convicted in New York City are placed in prisons more than 100 miles from the city, according to a calculation by New York Focus.

DOCCS has transferred Deione Gray’s 34-year-old son Unique at least 14 times over a six-year period. He was sentenced to 29 years-to-life for a murder during an attempted robbery in 2015.

Recently, Unique was transferred from Upstate Correctional Facility, a prison near the Canadian border, to Five Points, a maximum-security prison over 200 miles southwest. Each time he’s transferred, Gray has to find a new private shuttle that can take her to his prison; she doesn’t own a car and the prisons are hundreds of miles from her home in Brooklyn. Gray makes the trip as often as she can.

For Gray, the proximity law doesn’t apply — her son does not have minor children. The law does not allow transfers for incarcerated people seeking proximity to adult children, elderly parents, or other close relatives.

Proposed state legislation could provide a solution for this: It would create a pilot program for moving any incarcerated person, rather than just parents, closer to home.

“I just need to hug him,” Gray said. “I miss him so much.”

“If you were a city Democrat, I’d say go [away],” one voter told the state senator as he went door to door in the lower Hudson Valley town of Chester on the Saturday before the November general election.

We walked up and down rows of identical yellow-shingled houses as he asked residents to vote for Democrats in town and county races.

The 38-year-old state senator had canvassed the working-class housing development as many as 10 times over the 13 years he’s served as a state legislator, he told me.

From the outside, it seems like a hard sell. Chester is in Orange County, where Republicans dominate politics. President Donald Trump won the county by 8 points in 2024, and Republicans have long controlled county government. Skoufis, meanwhile, describes himself as “center-left” and supports policies like higher taxes on the rich, free pre-K, and free tuition at public colleges.

But Skoufis, whose state Senate district nearly matches the county lines, thinks he’s cracked the code. He represents one of the reddest districts of any Democrat in Albany, and often brags that he is more popular than Governor Kathy Hochul among his constituents. During the past three presidential election cycles, he said, Orange County had a “surprising” number of homes sporting both Trump and Skoufis lawn signs.

That Saturday, the voter who derided city Democrats assured Skoufis he planned to vote for the Democratic slate.

“We don’t really have the commie Democrats they have down in the city,” the man said, an obvious reference to New York City’s then-Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Skoufis laughed and agreed.

Skoufis does not shy away from antagonizing his Democratic Party colleagues. Last year he delivered a speech on the Senate floor accusing Hochul of running the state budget process like a “monarch.” (Later, Hochul vetoed seven of his bills on a single day in September.)

Toward the end of last year, their feud came to an end. Skoufis declined to go into detail about the resolution, but said he had a “series of conversations” with Hochul and her senior staff that calmed tensions.

“We all resolved that this fight is stupid, it’s not serving anybody well, and that we’re far better off working together,” said Skoufis, who has since reintroduced several of the bills she vetoed. His battle with the state’s most powerful politician had begun and ended unexpectedly — evidence, he said, of his philosophy that politics is often akin to “changing the tires on a moving car.”

He passed the most bills last year of any lawmaker, was appointed to the executive committee of the Democratic National Committee (after a failed long-shot bid to serve as chair), and led oversight hearings into Hochul’s overhaul of the state’s home care system. His outspoken and sometimes abrasive style has captured media attention and made him one of the most recognizable names in state politics.

Elected officials and advocates told New York Focus that Skoufis is primarily motivated by delivering for his constituents. His ability to do so on basic issues — like renovating a courthouse, putting a splash pad in Port Jervis, and helping the town of Cornwall get funding for holiday lights on Main Street — is part of why he consistently wins reelection, they said.

He’s made enemies of some local progressive groups who believe he was a key force in watering down the 2024 good cause eviction law, which Skoufis vocally opposed. But critics and allies alike said he was deeply committed to the causes he chose to dedicate himself to — even if that has sometimes led him to be petulant.

“His critics aren’t wrong when they say he’s a strident, obnoxious, pain-in-the-ass,” said John Kaehny, the executive director of Reinvent Albany, a government watchdog group. But Kaehny called him “a tremendous advocate for his constituents,” “great for Democracy in New York,” and “a very effective politician.”

Skoufis is seeking to use his success and platform to steer New York Democrats — and the national party — in a new direction. He believes that the future of the party lies north of the city, in a purple district that resembles the suburban and exurban areas where his party is battling to win back voters.

At the moment, Skoufis is the lower profile young, upstart Democrat reshaping New York politics and the national party.

Skoufis said he shares Mamdani’s philosophy about politics: Both are sharply critical of the establishment and represent voters who feel politicians have failed them. While Skoufis rarely interacted with Mamdani during the socialist’s time in the Assembly — “he wasn’t super legislatively active,” Skoufis said — he noted that he has some Mamdani-esque accomplishments. He landed a legislative grant for a free bus pilot in his district, and another to dispatch social workers rather than police to respond to mental health calls.

A vocal child care advocate, Skoufis has been energized by Hochul’s promise to make pre-K universal by the 2028 school year, and made an unsuccessful push this spring to move that deadline up by a year.“That is a wonderful fight to be having, versus whether we are doing universality or not,” he said.

But politically, Skoufis hews closer to the center, and prefers the moniker “populist.”

His most notably populist crusade has been against the approximately $10 billion in corporate subsidies that state and local entities grant each year. He’s brought corporate watchdogging to his role as chair of the state Senate investigations committee, where he’s held hearings on energy prices, live event ticketing, and pharmacy benefit managers.

In the 2023 state budget, he convinced the state to install a first-of-its-kind independent monitor to oversee the activities of an Orange County agency tasked with attracting corporations to the area with tax agreements. Since November, Skoufis has been locked in a battle with that office, the Orange County Industrial Development Agency, after he successfully urged the monitor to veto a 15-year, $80 million package of tax breaks for Amazon to build a 3.2 million-square-foot distribution center.

The IDA sued the state to overturn the veto in January. Within weeks, though, the agency’s leaders began negotiating a possible compromise with Skoufis to wind down the monitor in exchange for reforms, such as wage floors for workers on IDA-funded projects and more input from localities before tax breaks are granted. In the end, they were unable to reach an agreement, and Skoufis is now pushing to extend the monitor’s presence for another three years in the upcoming state budget.

Skoufis has supported Mamdani’s push to raise taxes on millionaires and big corporations. But he’s quick to note that the policy would have a limited impact on his constituents, even if the tax hike were ever applied statewide.

“I represent very few of them,” he said, “but if you are a millionaire in New York state, I am open and conceptually supportive of modest increases to personal income taxes.”

Elsewhere, he sharply diverges from Mamdani: The senator has declined to support statewide immigrant sanctuary legislation, although he says he wants to “protect” undocumented people who live their lives “peaceably.” And Skoufis was a high-profile opponent of congestion pricing, as well as good cause eviction.

Skoufis is skeptical of activists and believes that the average voter doesn’t care much about hot-button ideological debates.

“I don’t read a script from white papers when I’m communicating with constituents,” he said. “They don’t expect me to, they don’t want me to, and if I did, I wouldn’t win every couple of years in my district.”

Skoufis has been “one of the main political faces of Orange County for a long time,” according to Chris McKenna, a local reporter in the Hudson Valley.

At the doors in Chester, Skoufis was lighthearted and seemed happy talking to his constituents. Many residents, upon opening the door, recognized him as their state senator.

An older woman wearing a New York Police Department windbreaker, a registered Republican, told Skoufis that she voted for him last year and would vote for him again.

“The [Republican] party left you,” Skoufis told her.

Middletown’s Democratic mayor, Joseph DeStefano, said that Skoufis had helped launch a program to install a “social service coordinator” in the police department to respond to police calls and help connect people with social services. After the legislative grant expired, the department made the position permanent because they had “such significant success with it,” the mayor said.

“He’s very solid on supporting police,” DeStefano said. “When a police officer was shot, he was one of the first people to call.”

Skoufis has also made allies of some Republican leaders. Port Jervis Mayor Dominic Cicalese said that Skoufis landed him legislative grants that funded 90 percent of the cost of a new police training facility. “That was tremendous of him.”

“It’s not a question of Democrat or Republican. It’s, are you bringing in the funding? Are you effective with the legislation that reaches the Senate?” said Cicalese. With Skoufis, he said, the answer to both questions is “yes.”

At the same time, he’s been a disruptive force in local politics. In 2023, Skoufis held a press conference in front of the county government center and spoke about what he has called a “complex web” of “very obvious contract fraud.” (Skoufis called the press conference “pulling a Preet Bharara,” referencing the famed US attorney who prosecuted Albany corruption.)

Skoufis accused Republican County Executive Steve Neuhaus of an unethical scheme in which the county awarded a major contract to the family member of one of Neuhaus’s closest advisers. (County officials denied any wrongdoing.)

When knocking on doors, Skoufis made sure to tell voters about an FBI investigation into the alleged corruption.

“The average person appreciates that … when I find wrongdoing, fraud, I actually say something about it, I do something about it,” Skoufis said.

“I don’t go along to get along,” he often says.

For a politician who has so effectively sold himself to voters, he is relatively quiet about his own biography. In some ways, Skoufis is a “city Democrat.”

“In Orange County,” he said, “quite a bit of my background might not be relatable to my constituents.”

As a young child, he lived in the same public housing development that his mother had grown up in: Pomonok, in Queens. His father was born in a rural village in the mountains of Greece and immigrated with his family to New York as a teenager. “It’s sort of the cliche ‘they came here with basically nothing but the shirts on their back’ story,” Skoufis said.

Skoufis’s parents divorced when he was young and his mother moved to Orange County to send him to better schools. She worked for the US Postal Service, and Skoufis’s dad opened a deli in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The senator was the first in his immediate family to attend college, attending George Washington University for undergrad and Columbia University for a masters in political science.

And despite his populist bent, he is as much of a career politician as anyone: In 2012, at the age of 25, he became the youngest member of the state Assembly.

He won that election — against a Republican — without the support of the state’s top Democratic elected official, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo.

According to Skoufis, the Cuomo administration contacted his campaign and said they had one question for him before they could decide whether to endorse.

“I’m thinking to myself, it’s probably a question about [reproductive] choice or taxes or the environment or something big picture,” Skoufis recalled. “You know what their question was before considering an endorsement? What my position was on rail on the new Tappan Zee Bridge.”

Cuomo opposed spending money to add a rail track to the bridge, which would have been a significant expansion of commuter transit for Orange County residents. Skoufis said he supported the rail project.

Skoufis told the story as evidence of his electoral prowess: He wins by delivering for his constituents on issues that shape their daily lives, while myopic state leaders put political considerations first.

A former senior Cuomo staffer, who requested anonymity because her current employer does not permit her to speak with the press, told New York Focus that Skoufis had been an outspoken critic of the previous governor, but that the office maintained a working relationship with the legislator.

Skoufis told her at the time that attacking Cuomo “works for me. I get cheered if I hit back against the governor,” she said — a line he later repeated publicly about his feud with Hochul.

“He needs to show his folks that he’s fighting against the machine,” she said.

A large reason for that, she emphasized, is that under state law, districts choose their own curricula. The Back to Basics law was supposed to fix that problem, by requiring school districts to align instruction with research on how children best learn to read by September 2025.

Specifically, districts had to start teaching using the “science of reading,” a phonics-based approach grounded in the idea that reading isn’t innate and must be explicitly taught through skills like sounding out words. At the time, it was gaining traction as the policy du jour in literacy instruction as an alternative to “balanced literacy,” an approach long embraced by New York districts that teaches children to instead rely on context clues for reading comprehension.

By passing the Back to Basics plan, New York joined at least 37 states and the District of Columbia in a nationwide movement fueled in part by results in Mississippi, where rigorous literacy laws coincided with major gains in academic performance over the past 13 years.

But a New York Focus analysis of mandatory school surveys submitted to the state has found that more than 130 school districts are still using “balanced literacy” curricula.

Teachers in those districts, primarily in rural and suburban areas, are often required to use reading programs that advocates say contradict the settled body of research around teaching reading. The misaligned curricula could have an especially profound impact on students of color and those from low-income families, who are already more likely to experience reading difficulties, these advocates say.

New York’s law differs from those of some other states, which require districts to pick from a list of state-approved reading curricula and offer extra funding for districts to purchase them. Others have allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to advance multiyear literacy plans with clear benchmarks.

While New York’s Back to Basics law required the State Education Department to provide best practices to districts, it entrusts school districts with making the switch and measuring their own compliance — leaving in place a discretionary system that advocates argue contributed to New York’s low literacy rates to begin with.

So far, that piecemeal approach has left hundreds of thousands of students learning how to read with widely discredited curricula and instructional materials.

“Our concern is a lack of urgency,” said Jeff Smink, deputy director at the advocacy group EdTrust-New York, which recently published its own analysis of the survey data submitted to the state in September. “If 400,000 kids aren’t getting evidence-based instruction, that, to us, is a crisis.”

Smink said the law lacks enforcement mechanisms in part because of New York’s deeply embedded culture as a strong local-control state, where most decisions about public schools are determined by districts, school boards, and even individual campuses. He also said the state teachers union wields significant influence and “opposes anything they think threatens teacher autonomy.

The literacy law, which invested $10 million in teacher training and tasked the union with training 20,000 teachers, came under fire after a March Hechinger Report investigation revealed that the training program heavily featured the instructional methods that Hochul set out to replace.

The survey data offers an unprecedented statewide look at how schools are teaching elementary school students how to read and write — and insight into the state’s progress as it gears up to replicate the same approach with math instruction.

New York’s reading scores are average at best. Thirty-one percent of New York fourth graders were proficient in reading last year, according to the National Assessment of Education Progress — just slightly above the US average and much lower than similar states like Massachusetts and New Jersey. Mississippi, the nation’s poorest state, also outperformed New York, which spends more money per pupil than any other state.

According to education advocates, the Back to Basics is doing little to make up for lost ground. “We are shockingly behind,” said Assemblymember Robert Carroll, a leading literacy advocate. “If we don’t do something, we are on the path to be the last in the nation on this.”

In response to a request for comment, a Hochul spokesperson wrote, “We anticipate continued progress and are working with SED to ensure that all schools are implementing evidence-based literacy instruction.”

The structure of New York’s education system means that students in neighboring districts may be learning with vastly different curricula. Until recently, Celine Schneider’s children attended school in Riverhead Central School District, where last year less than a third of third graders were proficient in reading.

On the literacy curricula survey, Riverhead was one of 16 districts that reported not aligning with the state’s best practices in every category of reading instruction, as well as in writing. The district said it uses a mix of curricula, including some aligned with the science of reading alongside balanced literacy programs critics say fail to teach children how to decode words properly.

Riverhead declined an interview request, but provided a statement through a communications firm verifying that its reading curriculum and instruction “are aligned with the state’s core curriculum standards and teaching practices.”

Schneider said that in Riverhead, students were promoted from one grade to another without gaining basic literacy skills. After watching her daughter fall behind, lose confidence, and endure bullying for not knowing how to read, Schneider said she decided to transfer her children to a nearby district with stronger reading intervention, despite the hefty tuitions required to switch districts. (The district, Quogue Union Free School District, said in its survey response that it uses science of reading curricula and aligns with the state’s best practices, though it did also report using a popular balanced literacy program.)

“It was either let them continue to fail, or struggle financially to make sure my kids are okay in the long run,” she said.

Schneider asked Quogue to assess her children’s reading abilities, and expected mixed results: Her oldest struggled with dyslexia, and she had just learned her other daughter was going to enter second grade as a nonreader. But the other three seemed to be succeeding in school.

Instead, the results were shockingly similar — all five were at least a grade level behind.

“Not being able to read destroys a child’s future,” she said. “We are setting our kids up to fail.”

Educators and policymakers have long debated how to best teach students how to read. “Balanced literacy” dominated US classrooms for much of the past 20 years, but many schools have moved away from it due to mounting evidence that can lead to poor reading outcomes.

The science of reading, on the other hand, represents a vast body of research emphasizing the importance of phonics — the relationship between letters and sounds — in teaching children how to read. While the approach has some detractors who say it pushes a “one-size-fits-all” approach that may not work for every child, studies show that instruction based on the science of reading improves reading proficiency, especially for children with dyslexia.

But whether it can underpin an effective education policy depends on how it is implemented, and some worry New York’s patchwork approach could limit its potential benefits.

In 2024, 46 percent of New York third graders were below basic proficiency in reading. Those outcomes could have profound implications: Research shows children who fail to read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school.

Mississippi’s success with the science of reading is hard to ignore. The state was ranked second worst nationwide for fourth-grade reading in 2013 and rose to the top 10 within a decade. Nearby states that followed suit, including Alabama and Louisiana, saw similar gains, a trend referred to as the “Southern surge.” Outcomes in other states have been more mixed, fueling debate between critics who see stalled scores as a cause for concern and proponents who argue the reforms need time to take hold.

Under New York’s Back to Basics plan, all school districts were supposed to confirm in the September survey that they transitioned to the science of reading in their curricula, instruction, and teacher training, and that they’re following best practices in seven literacy and writing categories. As part of the survey, districts submitted the curricula they use.

Most school districts reported meeting best practices, but the results still show areas of concern, especially in writing, fluency, and vocabulary practices; in each of those areas, over 100 school districts and BOCES — regional organizations that provide educational resources to districts — said they were out of alignment. Many also shared plans to improve instruction, including by reviewing curricula, revamping teacher training, and establishing literacy committees to inform programming.

Plattsburgh, Friendship, and Watkins Glen school districts all reported misalignment even though they submitted curricula that align with the science of reading. Superintendents at those school districts said they opted for candor, and that the survey revealed where instruction still needs improvement.

“There was a relatively large learning curve to get a full staff of teachers up to the expectation of Back to Basics,” said Watkins Glen Superintendent Kai D’Alleva. “But there has been tremendous buy-in, and we’re excited to see the fruits of this labor develop over the next few years.”

Overall, more than 130 of the state’s 713 school districts submitted balanced literacy curricula, with the most popular being Fountas and Pinnell and Lucy Calkins’ Units of Study, two of the most controversial programs. Scores of districts also created their own curriculum or reported using other programs that have not been reviewed by EdReports, a nonprofit that states and districts use to review the quality of K-12 instructional materials.

Kat Fratticci, co-founder of the Long Island Literacy Coalition, a community-based advocacy group founded in 2024 to promote the science of reading, said some districts are hesitant to revamp reading instruction because they’ve already invested heavily in their current curriculum, instructional materials, and teacher training.

At the same time, the state law does not have any clear enforcement mechanism built in to account for these variations. And the survey results don’t capture the full picture. Districts have to fill out the attestation survey annually, but they’re not required to submit proof that their curricula are aligned, and the state doesn’t provide guidance on what programs districts should steer clear of. Dozens of districts reported using balanced literacy programs despite confirming their alignment with all best practices.

The state shouldn’t tell school districts exactly what to purchase and teach, said Tarja Parssinen, founder of the Western NY Education Alliance, but “there has to be some guidance, some support, and some recommendations about what to stay away from.”

Balanced literacy curricula can mask dyslexia and other learning delays, research shows, because they often encourage students to guess words based on pictures or context clues rather than decode letters and sounds. In Schneider’s case, she said she thought her children were reading at the appropriate level because they would read aloud at home — until she noticed they were just reciting passages they had memorized in class.

Other Riverhead parents told New York Focus how their children who struggled to read were pushed along without proper intervention. One mother, who asked to remain anonymous due to potential litigation, said her son was reading at a kindergarten level in fourth grade before he started receiving one-on-one reading intervention.

“There’s a mantra in New York state: Just wait and see, wait and see if they grow out of it,” said Yolanda Thompson, special education advocate and three-time Riverhead school board candidate. “There needs to be a huge cultural mindset shift. We can’t fix something we don’t understand.”

The students most harmed when districts don’t use best practices are often students of color, those from low-income families, and multilingual learners, said Fratticci. “They don’t necessarily have that safety net of private tutoring or reading specialists outside of school, so when the classroom fails them, there’s no backup.”

That’s true in Riverhead, said Thompson. A majority of students there are from low-income families and around 40 percent are English language learners.

In the survey, Riverhead wrote that many of its teachers are new to the profession and work with high-needs students, and that financial constraints limit access to instructional resources. The district added that it hired three literacy coaches to lead professional development and support implementation of the science of reading, and is evaluating the need to purchase new instructional materials to teach phonics.

Education Department spokesperson Karen Male said in a statement that the agency plans to reach out to noncompliant districts to provide free instructional resources, explore professional development with colleges and universities, and work with districts to identify other needs. The agency did specify when districts must achieve full compliance.

Without holding districts accountable, Assemblymember Carroll said, New York will continue to lose the race to literacy.

In 2023, Carroll introduced a bill called the Right to Read Act, which would require all elementary school teachers to be trained in the science of reading, provide grants to districts to hire literacy coaches, and mandate school districts to choose from a list of approved, evidence-based curricula. The legislation is currently awaiting action in the education committee, but Carroll said he’s optimistic it will advance this year, citing recent conversations with colleagues and the governor about the need to improve New York schools to keep residents from leaving the state.

“Right now, in New York, you have to be lucky to learn how to read — and that is unjustified and unconscionable,” Carroll said. “We know how to fix this, and I know the governor wants to fix this. But we all need to work together because this is going to take the effort of the legislature and the governor working together to get this done.”

Carroll’s bill has the support of EdTrust, which is also calling for school districts to submit literacy plans with evidence of implementation and notify parents if they are using non-evidence-based curricula. In addition, the organization wants to see the state invest $15 million so that districts can purchase science of reading curricula, and mandatory universal screening in grades K-3.

“We have to catch up with the rest of the nation,” Smink said. “For the amount of money we spend and for how important learning to read is, we deserve policies like every other state.”

Over a six-month period late last year, the party’s campaign “housekeeping” account raised ​an unprecedented $812,000 in contributions​, the party’s biggest fundraising haul on record. ​More than half of it came from six-figure gifts from Airbnb, Uber, and the state Laborers’ PAC — the three largest donations to any Democratic party housekeeping account in the state’s most populous counties, according to online records that go back more than two decades.

The donors’ largesse could endear them to lawmakers in a growing nerve center of statewide political power. Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie hails from the borough and formerly chaired the Bronx Democratic Party. His protégé, Senator Jamaal Bailey — who now chairs the county party and controls its housekeeping account — is rumored to be next in line to be Senate majority leader.

For Airbnb and Uber, which gave $250,000 and $100,000 respectively, the amounts appear to be their largest political donations to any party committee or candidate in New York. The Laborers’ PAC, which represents building trades workers and gave $100,000, had made larger donations to the statewide Democratic Party — but never a contribution nearly as large to a county.

Airbnb did not respond to questions. Uber spokesperson Josh Gold said his company’s donation was meant to broadly bolster a political party playing an “important role in recruiting and supporting candidates who are focused on affordability, economic opportunity, and job creation.”

NYS Laborers’ PAC Director Vincent Albanese wrote in an email that his group’s donation “reflects the borough’s emergence as a major development hub — and the need for leadership that backs the union construction industry.”

Some of the donors have ties to London House, a political consulting and lobbying firm founded by a close friend and current campaign aide of Bailey’s, Jason Laidley. London House occupies a dual role: Its employees are paid to run the day-to-day operations of the Bronx Democratic Party, an organization that helps make or break local politicians’ political fortunes. It’s also paid by clients to lobby those same Bronx lawmakers on pressing government business.

It’s common for Albany lobbying firms, as a means of building influence, to solicit donations from their clients for the benefit of a politician or party. It’s more unusual for a lobbying firm to also be paid by the party itself, allowing its staff to potentially benefit from some of the donations they helped secure. Neither Laidley nor his clients responded to questions about whether he’d solicited donations from them. Bailey and Heastie also did not respond to questions for this article.

Housekeeping accounts can take donations of any size, including from corporations, but the money must be spent on “party-building” activities, such as paying for staff and headquarters, rather than directly supporting specific candidates in elections. Good government groups have long criticized the accounts as a loosely regulated way for special interests to get around donation limits and curry favor with politicians.

“Housekeeping accounts are a gigantic loophole in New York’s campaign finance rules,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the government reform group Reinvent Albany. “Our groups have been complaining about them for decades because they can do what they’re doing here: Translate special interest money into political influence.”

As Assembly speaker since 2015, Carl Heastie is one of the three most powerful people in Albany. He is also the former chairman of the Bronx Democratic Party and has maintained an interest in its financial success. As New York Focus previously reported, the Assembly Democrats’ campaign committee has directed nearly $700,000 to the Bronx Democrats since 2020, despite the rarity of competitive general elections in the borough. The committee has not given substantial sums to any other county party in recent years.

Bailey may be in line for a similar ascension.

Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins will reach the end of an eight-year term limit for the position in December, though Senate Democrats could easily amend the rules to allow her to remain leader. Even if they do, Stewart-Cousins’s deputy leader is retiring, and insiders believe Bailey is well-positioned to replace him and then to take the top position when Stewart-Cousins, age 75, retires herself.

In a race to succeed Stewart-Cousins, Bailey would have the same built-in advantages that helped Heastie win an internal battle in 2015 to become Assembly speaker while serving as Bronx Democratic Party chair. Bailey would have a bloc of votes among Bronx senators and could lean on Bronx Democrats’ longstanding alliance with the Queens Democratic Party, which holds similar sway over senators in that borough.

If Bailey led the Senate while Heastie led the Assembly, it would mark an unprecedented concentration of power in the Bronx Democratic Party.

That would also benefit Jason Laidley, founder of London House, who was previously a top aide in Bailey’s office and whose firm is a current campaign consultant for the senator. The Bailey-led Bronx Democratic Party has paid London House hundreds of thousands of dollars in once-hidden consulting fees, New York Focus has reported, and the firm has routinely represented candidates the party has tapped for judgeships.

Over the most recent six-month period, the Bronx Democratic Party housekeeping account paid over $30,000 to London House and an additional $31,000 to Logan Events, a company Laidley founded in 2023, to provide the party with “gala services.”

Arianna Collado, a lobbyist at London House, was paid nearly $50,000 over the last six months to run the party’s day-to-day operations as executive director.

The party housekeeping account Collado helps oversee spent $440,000 over the period, on expenses including a Netflix account and a number of sizable dining tabs. Housekeeping funds cannot legally be used to cover personal expenses, but may be used in connection with party business. London House did not respond to requests for comment on the expenses.

As London House works for both the party and its chair, its employees also lobby lawmakers they help elect, including Bailey.

Over the past two years, London House’s list of lobbying clients has nearly doubled, and one of them is also the county party’s biggest new donor. Airbnb has retained London House to lobby since late 2024 and pays the firm $15,000 a month.

When the company donated $250,000 to the Bronx Democrats last September, Airbnb and London House were in the midst of a major push in the New York City Council to roll back restrictions on short-term rentals in the city.

Lobbying disclosures show that last year, London House lobbied five Bronx members of the City Council on two proposals pushed by Airbnb, including one that would significantly soften the restrictions.

One bill gained seven co-sponsors, the other gained nine — and for each, four were members of the Bronx Democratic Party. Airbnb’s push gained traction but ultimately died amid heavy pushback from opponents.

Since the bill’s defeat, a new speaker has assumed the top position in the City Council, and London House played a role in her election. In a celebratory photo taken the November night that Julie Menin wrapped up the support needed among fellow Council members to win the race, Menin is surrounded by a group of 10 allies that helped make her speaker, including Collado and Laidley, who advised Menin as the race unfolded.

The speaker’s race is often decided by Democratic political bosses, who form alliances and convince the Council members in their delegations to come along. In the photo, taken at the headquarters of the Queens Democratic Party, Menin is standing next to the chair of the Queens Democratic Party, US Representative Gregory Meeks — who is also Jason Laidley’s father-in-law. The family ties have further cemented the longstanding alliance between Queens and the Bronx and expanded London House’s sphere of influence.

After rounding up the necessary votes, Menin gave top jobs to Bronx Democrats. She hired Miguelina Camilo, Heastie’s former counsel, as her chief of staff, and a former Heastie aide, Simone Jones, as her deputy chief.

In response to questions, Menin’s office said the hirings were unrelated to her Bronx backing and were based on the women’s extensive qualifications. Several top Menin officials are not Bronx-connected.

During Menin’s first two months as speaker, Airbnb reported lobbying both Menin and her staff concerning short-term rental laws. In late February, Airbnb hired a lobbying firm founded by Ebony Meeks-Laidley — Meeks’s daughter and Jason Laidley’s wife — for $7,500 a month. Now, both members of the Bronx power couple are poised to push Airbnb’s agenda before a speaker their family played a key role in seating.

Last year, Menin strongly opposed the Airbnb-backed legislation that significantly softened restrictions. Menin has historically had a close relationship with the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union, which fiercely opposes efforts to loosen short-term rental rules. The bill has not yet been reintroduced this year, so according to the speaker’s office, Menin does not have a position on any possible renewed legislation.

Other Laidley clients who have donated to the Bronx Democrats are focused on Albany, where Bailey runs a key legislative committee overseeing insurance issues.

The car-sharing rental company Turo donated $10,000 to the party late last year, and its director of government affairs, Kenny Montilla, contributed another $20,000.

Last year, before the donations, Bailey co-sponsored a bill dramatically decreasing insurance liability requirements for peer-to-peer car sharing companies like Turo. The bill, boosted by Turo, was signed into law by Governor Kathy Hochul in December.

After the donations, Montilla reported lobbying Bailey on a bill the senator himself introduced in February. It would significantly increase liability coverage requirements for traditional car rental companies, Turo’s competitors.

The ride-sharing giant Uber, which donated $100,000 to the Bronx Democrats in October, is also pressing hard for reductions in auto accident payouts.

Laidley doesn’t work for Uber. But Meeks-Laidley, Laidley’s lobbyist wife, recently inked a $10,000-a-month contract with a lobbying group receiving millions of dollars from Uber, called Citizens for Affordable Rates. The hiring came just after Bailey and fellow Senate Democrats released a budget proposal omitting Hochul’s sweeping plan to narrow insurance company liability for car accidents.

Bailey has been publicly skeptical of Uber’s biggest push in Albany this year, despite the company’s own staff previously lobbying him to support Hochul’s proposal. Uber, Citizens for Affordable Rates, and Meeks-Laidley did not answer a question about whether Meeks-Laidley would now lobby Bailey on the matter.

Bailey did introduce legislation in January that benefits Uber. Mirroring the Turo-backed legislation last year, it would dramatically ease liability limits for car-sharing companies, putting their coverage on par with taxis. Uber has publicly expressed a desire for such a change in New York law.

In the months before Bailey introduced the bill, Uber reported lobbying Bailey on “Insurance and Litigation Reform.” Asked whether Uber had lobbied Bailey to introduce the bill, Gold, the Uber spokesperson, said the company “regularly engages with elected officials and stakeholders on issues affecting our business, including insurance and affordability.”

In New York Democratic primaries, including in the Bronx, business-friendly incumbents backed by the party are facing stronger competition from an ascendant political left. During the 2025 primaries for New York City Council, Uber spent millions seeking to elect candidates supporting its agenda. The $100,000 donation — made after those primaries were over — is part of a wider strategy in multiple states to support party-building efforts, Gold said, ensuring “a broader and more balanced bench of candidates in the political pipeline.”

They’re not just watching from the sidelines. A national industry group, led by some of the country’s largest pipeline builders and a slew of other gas interests, has recently entered the fray, tapping former state politicians to help advance Governor Kathy Hochul’s “all of the above” energy strategy. Top of their agenda: pressing pause on the state’s climate targets.

The group, a nonprofit called Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future, represents some of the companies with the most to gain if Hochul’s proposed rollbacks to the state’s climate law go through. Speaking at a conference in late March, its New York chapter co-chair, former assemblymember and Bronx borough president Ruben Diaz Jr., gave a spirited defense of the governor’s plan, calling it “responsible leadership.”

“Yes, more renewables,” he said, “but yes also to modern efficient natural gas when needed to maintain stability. That is not retreating from climate action. That is governing with common sense.”

Diaz, a self-professed environmental justice champion, was delivering the keynote before the Independent Power Producers of New York, or IPPNY, a trade group representing power plant operators.

It was a new venue for Natural Allies. Formed in 2020, the group has recruited a roster of high-profile former elected officials to persuade Democrats, and especially Black and Latino voters, that gas is here to stay. In the past six months, it has carried that playbook into state-level advocacy, bringing on prominent spokespeople in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

The group is entering New York politics at a pivotal moment. Energy demand is growing, but President Donald Trump’s administration is pulling support for renewables and waging war on offshore wind, a central pillar of New York’s green transition. State energy regulators are considering a proposal from business groups to pause efforts to achieve a zero-emissions grid. And the governor is fighting a court order over violations of the state climate law.

The fight has come to a head in state budget talks, which are now in overtime as the governor, Assembly, and Senate wrangle over Hochul’s proposed rollbacks of New York’s emissions mandates and other policy sticking points. Despite support from some upstate Democrats, Hochul has admitted that she’s facing an uphill battle with the legislature.

Natural Allies brings national heft to the state fight, with the help of familiar faces from New York’s political scene. The group announced Diaz and former Lieutenant Governor Robert Duffy as its state co-chairs last fall, and they quickly began making the rounds in policy circles and among clergy groups. Diaz’s efforts focused on communities of color downstate.

Duffy, who directs the Greater Rochester Chamber of Commerce, leads the group’s upstate outreach. He said the gas group’s priorities mesh with those of many businesses in the region, who he said could be forced out of New York if the state keeps its current climate deadlines.

“It just defies logic that this is even controversial,” he said.

Natural Allies says it doesn’t lobby in New York, but it treads a fine line.

At the March conference, Diaz mentioned meeting beforehand with a state senator and said he was helping to build “a coalition so that we can give the governor the backing that she needs, so that we can convince many of the legislators” to change the climate law. The previous month, according to the group’s social media, he joined the annual conference of the New York State Association of Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislators.

Natural Allies’ website hosts a “Take Action” page directed at state energy regulators. In late March, the group tagged state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins in a social media post warning of massive energy cost hikes on families “if [climate law] adjustments aren’t made.”

Michael McKeon, spokesperson for Natural Allies, denied that any of the group’s efforts amounted to lobbying. (McKeon is a partner at the consultancy and lobbying shop Actum, where Diaz is co-chair.)

“We have never had legislative meetings or met with the [governor’s office] to discuss legislation at all,” he wrote in an email. “We can and do try to educate folks about our view on issues.” Asked about the “Take Action” page on the group’s website, with a form letter pushing the Public Service Commission to hold hearings on the state’s clean grid mandate, McKeon said it was active for only 10 days in March and “falls outside of lobbying rules.”

Diaz, who runs his own lobbying firm in addition to working for Actum, said he would “know better” than to lobby without disclosing it.

“It’s a consulting gig,” Diaz said of his work with the group. “I’m just there to help educate the community.”

Natural Allies declined to say how much it was paying its state chairs. The group’s latest published tax filings, and prior reporting by the online outlet Heated, show that it paid LLCs linked to some of its national co-chairs, including several former congressmembers, more than $200,000 a year in 2024. The group reported more than $8 million in revenue that year and $10 million in the bank.

Then, Trump took office. Since then, the five publicly traded gas and energy infrastructure companies that top Natural Allies’ membership list have seen their stocks soar above the S&P 500. With surging energy demand all over headlines and renewables on the defensive, the gas industry is having a moment.

New York may serve as a test of how far the fossil fuel resurgence will go. Just a few years ago, the state had all but ruled out new fossil fuel infrastructure. Between 2020 and 2022, state environmental regulators rejected every major gas project that came before them, citing, among others, the climate law.

Last year, things began to shift. The clearest sign was Hochul’s green light, in November, for a major gas pipeline into the New York City area, which the state had rejected three times before. Soon after, Hochul’s administration finalized a new energy plan that envisions “repowering” — or rebuilding — some New York City fossil fuel plants as late as the mid-2030s in order to plug a hole in the state’s energy mix that was supposed to be filled by offshore wind.

Hochul spokesperson Ken Lovett said the pivot was a necessary response to Trump’s attacks on renewables, and that while the governor is “laser focused” on building clean energy, she won’t rule out any option to “help keep the lights and heat on and costs down.”

“Governor Hochul has been clear: we are not going to risk the reliability of the grid,” he said.

For some in the industry, the governor’s “all of the above” energy strategy doesn’t go far enough. “It’s a nice talking point,” said Gavin Donohue, president of the IPPNY trade group. “But we need to back it up with policy changes.”

Power plant operators are less focused on the climate law’s topline emissions targets, which Hochul is seeking to change through the budget, than a separate provision requiring a zero-emissions grid by 2040.

“Under the current law, my company and [others like it] are expected to essentially go away by 2040,” said Matthew Schwall, senior director of regulatory affairs at Alpha Generation, at IPPNY’s conference in late March.

Schwall’s company owns some of the aging, embattled “peaker” plants that get fired up when demand on the grid spikes. The company recently proposed new units at two of its Brooklyn plants, but Schwall said they faced tough odds getting built unless the state reconsiders its clean grid mandate.

The cost to build a new gas plant has doubled or tripled since 2020, depending on where in the country it’s built, an executive from the turbine manufacturer GE Vernova said at the conference. And given backlogs in supply chains and construction timelines, it would likely take until at least the early 2030s for any new gas plants to get up and running.

“I don’t know how to attract financing for a project when the law says your project cannot run by 2040,” Schwall said.

Hochul’s administration doesn’t need to change the climate law to put that mandate on hold. Regulators are already allowed to do so if they find that meeting the target will compromise grid reliability — and the business group petition pending before the state Public Service Commission asks them to do just that.

Though distinct, the fight at the commission and the one in the legislature are hard to fully separate, with many of the same groups on the front lines of both.

Yvonne Hennessey, who leads the environmental practice at the law firm Barclay Damon and has represented oil and gas clients in major permitting fights, said she has seen renewed industry interest over the last six months in building new gas plants. She said Hochul’s recent moves have been encouraging, but that investors are still waiting for a clearer signal that they’re welcome in New York. Major changes to the state’s climate targets would provide it.

Climate advocates say there couldn’t be a worse time to turn back toward fossil fuels. Raya Salter, founder of the Energy Justice Law and Policy Center and a member of the state’s Climate Action Council, called the industry’s recent advocacy a “cynical ploy.”

“The entire world is aflame because we won’t quit fossil fuels,” she said, pointing to Trump’s war in the Middle East and the fallout on energy prices. “The fact that we are doubling down on fossil fuel infrastructure because of the fossil fuel lobby, instead of doubling down on renewables, is actually insane.”

While experts expect the energy shock to accelerate the transition to renewables in many fossil fuel–importing economies, Hennessey sees it as an opportunity for New York to reconsider fracking, which it banned in 2014.

“We could very well have our own source of fossil fuel in the state of New York,” she said. (Hochul has so far rejected the idea of new gas drilling within state lines.)

Downstate, Diaz is pitching new gas plants as an environmental justice measure, which will allow the dirtiest old facilities to be retired.

He acknowledged that he himself long doubted those kinds of promises. In the late 1990s, he recalled, the state promised that a fleet of new downstate gas plants would be cleaner than the old. The problem, Diaz said, was that the old ones stayed on too — and many are still there, almost 30 years later.

What makes him think this time will be different?

“That we have Kathy Hochul,” he said.

Thirty-four counties and New York City have had to close applications or enrollment for the program, which subsidizes nearly the entire cost of private child care for low- and middle-income families. Twenty-one of them are keeping waitlists; New York City’s alone has grown to over 17,000 families — a more than 1,000 percent increase since last July.

And as Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislators enter final budget negotiations, local officials and advocates say that the proposals on the table — to add $1.2 billion to help counties reduce waitlists and resume enrollment — will not come close to clearing the growing statewide backlog.

The decades-old program, which is funded mostly by the federal and state governments, was originally intended to help welfare recipients afford child care so they could enter the workforce. But as the cost of child care has skyrocketed, eligibility and demand have expanded, and state funds haven’t kept pace.

The new data makes clear that the funding shortfall at the center of last year’s budget negotiations, which New York Focus first reported, has only worsened. Voucher enrollment in sixteen counties has remained closed since at least July, when the state Office of Children and Family Services first started publishing the data.

All counties have maintained enrollment for families who are required to receive it under state law, including those who receive other forms of cash assistance, though some county officials have warned those funds are running low, too.

If the final budget doesn’t include more funding than what lawmakers proposed earlier this year, New York City’s waitlist could surpass 30,000 by this time next year, warns Pete Nabozny, policy director of the advocacy group the Children’s Agenda. The outlook in the rest of the state is unclear, but officials from over a dozen counties expressed similar concerns about their ability to meet future demand even with increased funding.

Advocates and officials say the gaps highlight a key tension in the governor’s widely lauded massive child care investment plan and her rhetoric around it; in January, she said she “placed the state on a path to universal child care” last year, and that the plan is a “roadmap” to get there. The voucher funding shortfall has already led one county to withdraw from the governor’s signature universal child care pilot for children aged 3 and younger.

“It’s difficult to say we’re [on the path to] achieving universal child care in New York, and we’re expanding care with these new programs, while thousands of low-income children sit on waitlists,” said Nabozny.

Demand for the Child Care Assistance Program has skyrocketed after the state expanded eligibility a few years ago, including by raising the income threshold. Today, the governor’s office reports that more than half of young children in New York are eligible for the program. At the same time, a series of state-level reforms has made the program more expensive to administer.

The funding shortfall reached its peak last year. The final state budget added $400 million for vouchers after reports New York City would soon have to kick thousands of families out of the program. But by July, 21 counties had closed enrollment to new families except for mandatory cases. Four of those counties have since reopened enrollment, and one other briefly resumed enrollment for a couple of months until closing them again.

In Greene County, which hasn’t been enrolling new applicants for the past seven months, funding for even mandatory cases is running low. The county Social Services Commissioner Kira Pospesel said she expects remaining funds to cover a couple of weeks into April.

At that point, for the first time in the program’s history, Pospesel said, the county will have to use local money to cover mandatory cases because of rising costs.

“The state pushed to increase enrollment, but did not provide the dollars to pay for it,” she said. “The lack of funding is closing child care providers down and causing clients to lose their jobs and their housing.”

Hochul’s $1.2 billion funding boost, which the legislature backs, would add around $570 million in regular funding for the program, though counties will not know exactly how much they’ll receive until the fall. It also includes some short-term relief for localities that run out of that money: $475 million for New York City over the next two years, and $155 million for the rest of the state this fiscal year.

Local officials welcomed the proposed funding, but several told New York Focus it likely won’t be enough to fully eliminate waitlists or reopen enrollment. For instance, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz said that even with more than $14 million in supplemental funding under the proposal, Erie County’s program would still face a $8.5 million deficit. There are over 300 families currently on the waitlist there.

The county was selected for a pilot Hochul proposed in January to provide affordable full-day child care to children under the age of 3. In a February 10 letter to the legislature, Poloncarz said his administration opted out because it would have required a $2 million local contribution that did not seem “fiscally prudent” given the voucher shortfall. (Three other selected counties are planning to participate in the pilot.)

Poloncarz has gotten heat for the decision, he wrote in the letter. “I am equally frustrated that I and a growing number of county leaders across the state are not being provided with sufficient resources to accomplish the policy goals passed by your honorable body,” he wrote.

DSS commissioners across the state told New York Focus that funding gaps, uncertainty about future allocations, and a lack of local control over the program have led to disruptions for families.

Essex County is among eight counties that have not enrolled eligible families in the child care voucher program for an entire year, according to OCFS data. The county’s commissioner for social services, Angie Allen, said regulatory changes have “impacted our ability to be fiscally responsible to the taxpayers and provide the subsidy at the same time.”

Orleans County Commissioner Mary Grace Nenni agreed, noting that the western New York county exhausted its funding even after implementing a waitlist for new applications and recertifications and is now projected to run approximately $60,000 over budget.

“If the state does not want any waiting lists, they need to move away from capped allocations and provide unlimited reimbursement,” Nenni said over email.

In New York City, where the voucher waitlist has grown by about 1,500 families per month, Nabozny said the proposed funding would help provide vouchers to more families guaranteed coverage under state law, but it would not be sufficient to reduce the waitlist. It would take an additional $1.2 billion to clear the waitlist and meet projected demand over the next year, according to a recent analysis by Nabozny and Lauren Melodia, economic policy director at the Center for New York City Affairs.

OCFS spokesperson Daniel Marans did not comment on the status of waitlists or funding gaps, instead stating that it is at the counties’ discretion to close enrollment or maintain a waitlist based on the funds they have available. He described Hochul’s support for child care subsidies as “nothing short of historic,” highlighting that enrollment in the program has increased by 167 percent, and funding by 164 percent, since she took office.

Once the budget is passed, he said the agency will work closely with county officials to ensure state funding “is maximized to reach as many eligible New York families as possible.”

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been a vocal supporter of Hochul’s child care package, and has appeared alongside her at public events advertising it. But City Hall is taking a different tack on voucher funding. Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the mayor’s office, said the city is grateful for the governor’s commitment to funding the voucher program, but agreed that the “funding alone will not clear the waitlist, and it will not meet the scale of need.”

“Universal child care — care that is not means-tested, care that every family can rely on — is not a distant aspiration,” Lyle said. “It is an urgent necessity, and it must remain a top priority for this administration.”

The Empire State Campaign for Child Care, a statewide coalition of parents, early childhood educators and advocates fighting for high-quality universal child care, is pressing the state to add $1.2 billion for vouchers in the final budget to address the city’s waitlist, in line with Nabozny and Melodia’s analysis.

Child care advocates are also supporting two additional voucher-related proposals from the Assembly: one allowing counties to access supplemental funding immediately after the budget is passed, rather than waiting until they run out of funds, and another that eliminates minimum wage requirements for voucher recipients.

The budget negotiations come amid uncertainty surrounding federal child care and family assistance funding. In January, a federal judge blockedthe Trump administration from freezing billions in federal funding for child care and social services in five Democratic-led states, including New York.

Federal dollars accounted for nearly three-quarters of voucher program spending from April 2013 through March 2024, according to a state comptroller report. Potential interruptions to those funds make additional state support even more urgent, according to Dede Hill, vice president of policy at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy.

“That would be a devastating blow,” Hill said.

The bills, sponsored by Assemblymember Amy Paulin and Senator Gustavo Rivera, would direct the state to use its own funds to continue Essential Plan access for moderate-income New Yorkers. The flagship program provides free or low-cost healthcare to 1.7 million residents and has been instrumental in helping the state achieve near-universal insurance coverage.

The bills represent the first major proposal from state leaders to protect Essential Plan enrollees from policy changes enacted under the megabill President Donald Trump signed last year. Under those changes, New York lost a chunk of federal funding for the Essential Plan on January 1.

Earlier this month, the state secured federal approval to retool the plan — averting a “worse-case scenario” that could have ended the program entirely. The maneuver preserves coverage for 1.3 million New Yorkers, but an estimated 450,000 to 470,000 enrollees are set to be disenrolled in July.

None of the budget proposals introduced earlier this year by Governor Kathy Hochul, the Assembly, and the Senate address the impending coverage cliff, frustrating health care advocates who have been urging lawmakers to take action for months.

“There’s been a resistance generally, and I get it, to not have state dollars be responsible for the federal debacle, but we’re talking about human beings,” Paulin said of how current budget negotiations have evolved. “We’re trying very hard to work cooperatively to put forward a plan that could save them.”

State health officials are planning to mail notices by early April to New Yorkers losing coverage, directing them to seek out insurance from employers or purchase plans through the state’s exchange. Advocates have noted that few will likely be able to afford the plans, whose monthly premiums rank among the most expensive in the country.

Rivera’s bill would also set up a state-funded premium assistance program to make those plans more affordable, and other measures specifically addressing new restrictions on certain legal immigrants on the plan.

“These are the people who go to work every day and generate billions in economic activity,” Rivera wrote in a press release of the impacted New Yorkers. “This bill will protect basic healthcare access and mitigate the harm of these cruel policy choices.”

Paulin’s bill is expected to be released soon.

The bills do not allocate any specific funds, but Paulin said she hopes the effort “catches fire” and prompts deeper discussion about how much the state is willing to spend. A recent report by the Community Service Society of New York estimated that extending coverage for New Yorkers who will otherwise be kicked off the Essential Plan could cost $2.3 billion a year. The nonprofit has been among several organizations urging state lawmakers to consider various options to avoid imminent coverage loss.

Hochul’s budget proposal, which assumed New York might not get federal approval to tweak the Essential Plan, earmarked $2 billion to insure a subset of enrollees the state is legally mandated to provide health coverage for, regardless of federal support.

Now that the state got federal approval to rework the Essential Plan, the state could redirect that $2 billion to cover New Yorkers getting dropped from the program, said Michael Kinnucan, director of health policy at the left-leaning Fiscal Policy Institute.

“We have the moral obligation to cover this population,” said Kinnucan, who supports legislative efforts to use state funding to continue Essential Plan coverage. “The money is there.”

It’s unclear if legislators and the governor will agree. Paulin noted the governor’s budget proposal put that money aside strictly in the event that the Essential Plan ended. All three budget proposals also call for hefty reimbursement rate increases to health care providers, which would complicate the overall financial picture. Kinnucan is among a group of health care advocates who have criticized lawmakers prioritizing provider rate increases over the coverage cliff.

“The bottom line is there’s been no agreement with the three [budget proposals] of what it is we have to spend,” Paulin said.

The Paulin and Rivera bills represent a significant departure from the legislature’s approach to federal cuts. Last fall, top Democrats declined to return to Albany for a special session to address the imminent impact of federal cuts to Medicaid and other benefits programs — effectively punting the issue to the current budget season.

Earlier this month, both chambers’ budget proposals stopped short of allocating state funds to fully replace the cuts. It’s unclear how much traction the eleventh-hour proposals could get at this stage of negotiations. The state’s fiscal year starts on April 1, but in recent years lawmakers have delivered a final budget weeks or months late.

The measure is likely to encounter strong resistance from Hochul, who has centered her budget proposal this year on “affordability” but has been reluctant to raise taxes on the wealthy. She has insisted the state cannot afford to backfill federal cuts. The governor’s office declined to respond to a list of specific questions, but pointed to recent interviews where Hochul said she is continuing to work with federal officials to figure out a path forward for New Yorkers who are dropped from the Essential Plan.

Essential plan enrollee Chris Sahar, a substitute special needs teacher in Queens, is among those likely to become uninsured in July. Sahar, who also works as a church organist and a musical composer, relies on the plan to manage Hashimoto’s disease, an autoimmune disorder that requires medication and regular checkups.

“The Essential Plan this year has taken away the stress of worrying over high health care costs, and the zero monthly deductible has made it easier for me to put more money into my retirement,” said the 59-year-old. As a substitute teacher, Sahar is not eligible for employer-provided insurance or paid leave unless he is able to consistently increase his shifts.

Like many New Yorkers enrolled in the Essential Plan, Sahar earns too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase a plan on the state’s exchange. Sahar currently falls in the tier of users that earn between $31,921 and $39,900 as a single person — or 200 to 250 percent of the federal poverty level — a demographic ineligible for coverage starting in July.

Sahar was previously enrolled in Medicaid for years while his career took a backseat to caregiving for his mother, who was suffering from metastatic breast cancer. “I think the best thing I ever did in my life was take care of my mom in her last years,” he said, noting how the experience also left him “haunted” by how financially devastating a diagnosis could be.

The Essential Plan’s impending coverage cliff is just the first of several seismic changes coming to the state’s healthcare landscape as a result of federal cutbacks. New work rule requirements for Medicaid that kick in next January are projected to result in hundreds of thousands more New Yorkers losing their health coverage over the next year and a half. Similar work rules for food assistance kicked in earlier this month.

It’s a cry for state leaders to boost the pensions of government employees. In 2012, the state created a new pension plan, called “Tier 6,” that had less generous benefits and required more years of work compared to previous plans. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo claimed the change would save state and local governments $80 billion over three decades.

Now, New York’s top unions want to roll back those changes. They argue it would help keep workers in the public sector, but it won’t come cheap: In dollar terms, it could end up being one of the biggest decisions made in this year’s budget.

The campaign has emerged as a major issue in negotiations around the state budget, which is due on April 1. Here’s what you need to know.

What do the unions want?

The “Fix Tier 6” agenda contains multiple planks, including lowering the age where workers can retire with full pensions, boosting payments, and reducing employee contributions.

Different unions have different priorities. For the New York State United Teachers, the leading player in the Fix Tier 6 campaign, the top goal is lowering the retirement age to 55, down from 63.

“That’s the thing that we believe is impacting retention for our early-career educators,” NYSUT President Melinda Person told New York Focus.

The Public Employees Federation, which represents a wide range of government positions, says its top priority is lowering the amount taken out of workers’ salaries — currently between 3 and 6 percent — to pay for their pensions.

“Because of the affordability crisis, putting money into people’s pockets now makes a difference,” PEF Vice President Randi DiAntonio said.

The unions argue that boosting pensions would help attract and retain qualified workers, and cut down on costs for overtime and consultants.

More people work for state and local government in New York now than in 2012, when Tier 6 was enacted, but staffing shortfalls vary by agency.

DiAntonio said the recruiting and retention concerns are most acute at agencies like the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs state prisons. The department has been in turmoil since a three-week wildcat strike last year, and this year’s proposed state budget allocates over $500 million to have the National Guard help staff prisons.

Teacher shortages are relatively rare in New York right now, but NYSUT warns that a wave of upcoming retirements, and low enrollment in teacher training programs, could lead to scarcity in the next decade.

Would boosting pensions improve state government?

Union leaders say so.

New York AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento said in a statement to New York Focus that Tier 6 “has created a recruitment and retention crisis” due to “unprecedented mandatory overtime” and “constant hiring, training, and backfilling of vacant positions.”

But there may be more cost-effective ways to attract and retain employees.

Several studies have found that public employees value pensions less than salaries or other benefits like job security and health insurance, that boosting pensions can accelerate retirement, and that pensions may not help retain higher-performing workers.

One of the studies, based on a Wisconsin law that cut teacher salaries and pensions, found that teachers respond four times less to pension changes than to salary changes when deciding whether to remain in their jobs.

Boosting pensions “would do something” to keep workers, said David Schleicher, a Yale Law School professor who studies state fiscal systems, “but it’s not clear to me that it is the most or even a mildly efficient method for doing so.”

Boosting pensions does have one advantage for today’s politicians, though. While wage increases require immediate payment, the full bill for a pension boost won’t come due for years.

What would the changes cost?

It’s unclear. The union leaders that New York Focus spoke with didn’t have precise cost estimates for their proposals.

Person, the NYSUT president, said that lowering the retirement age would likely cost somewhere between $100 million and $700 million annually.

“We don’t know what the deal is yet. So it’s hard to nail down a number,” she said.

The state Senate and Assembly budget proposals also didn’t provide specific figures, despite their support for boosting pensions.

Some budget watchdogs see this as irresponsible.

“We expect cost estimates in every part of normal life,” said Ken Girardin, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “And yet lawmakers are capable of this cognitive dissonance to endorse a policy proposal when they don’t know the cost.”

Unions say the state can afford the changes, pointing to the strong financial condition of New York’s pension funds.

Supporters of Tier 6 argue that it has helped keep New York’s pension funds healthy even as the amount that New York pays for pensions has exploded, from $1 billion a year in 2000 to more than $15 billion post-pandemic. As life expectancies climb, many workers who retire at 55 are expected to collect pensions for longer than they spent working.

Where do state leaders stand?

New York’s top lawmakers have all endorsed the campaign in general, but have been vague about which reforms they actually support.

At the “Fix Tier 6” rally, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said he is “one of the biggest advocates” of getting rid of Tier 6, and that “this is the year we need to blow that shit away.”

Governor Kathy Hochul also spoke at the rally, where she said she’s “fighting for a fairer pension plan,” but didn’t endorse any specific proposal.

And in a video message played at the rally, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins said that Senate Democrats are “receptive” to Tier 6 reforms, but likewise, didn’t say what exactly should change.

Even several Republicans — generally union skeptics — have supported the push.

Person is optimistic that legislators will go big. “We want to be able to go back to our members and say, ‘This is enough of a signal for you to stay. Please don’t leave public service.’”

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

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Common Platforms Where Sextortion Begins

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Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids

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About the Author

Chris Yadon, MPA

Managing Director

As Saprea’s first employee and Executive Director, Chris Yadon collaborated closely with the organization’s founders to launch and establish its operations in 2015. Chris now serves as the Managing Director, leading the organization’s public efforts to drive societal change around the issue of child sexual abuse. He has previously held executive leadership positions for start-up tech and healthcare organizations. Chris is committed to driving broad societal change to address child sexual abuse and uses his influence as a thought leader and strategist to inspire others to take action. He firmly believes we can collectively create a better future for our children. A sought-after speaker, Chris inspires audiences with timely topics such as overcoming emotional numbing by learning how to feel again, protecting children from child sexual abuse in a hypersexualized world, and how to intentionally drive societal change. He has been featured across several media platforms where he is requested to contribute as an industry leader and subject matter expert. Chris received a BA and an MPA degree from Brigham Young University. He is the grateful father of six children: three boys and three girls. He and his wife, Christy, have been married for 28 years.

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Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure

There is no quick fix that ensures your child will not purposely consume pornography, but a parent can do specific things that will reduce this risk. It is nearly impossible for a parent to prevent all accidental exposure to pornography. Still, again, a parent can do specific things that will reduce the volume of accidental exposures and their impact.

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Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

Research reveals a striking pattern among incarcerated women: up to 66% report experiencing childhood sexual abuse, more than double the rate found in the general female population (31%). While multiple factors contribute to incarceration, this dramatic statistical disparity demands attention.

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The post Child Sexual Abuse – Turning Statistics into Action and Protecting Kids appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure.

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Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure.

About the Author

Chris Yadon

Managing Director

Chris Yadon is the Managing Director of Saprea, and is responsible for managing all operations and services of Saprea in both Utah and Georgia. Yadon has spent most of his professional career in start-up executive management with an emphasis in operations, marketing, and sales. Since joining Saprea in 2015, Yadon has brought a valuable skillset to the organization and is committed to addressing the epidemic of child sexual abuse. His expertise centers on increasing awareness arond this epidemic and educating the public on best practices for prevention and the healing services available to survivors. Yadon has been featured across several regional and national media platforms where he is often requested as an industry thought leader and expert.

Recent blogs

Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure.

There is no quick fix that ensures your child will not purposely consume pornography, but a parent can do specific things that will reduce this risk. It is nearly impossible for a parent to prevent all accidental exposure to pornography. Still, again, a parent can do specific things that will reduce the volume of accidental exposures and their impact.

Read this article

Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

Research reveals a striking pattern among incarcerated women: up to 66% report experiencing childhood sexual abuse, more than double the rate found in the general female population (31%). While multiple factors contribute to incarceration, this dramatic statistical disparity demands attention.

Read this article

Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It

In my work addressing child sexual abuse, I see this phenomenon daily. Despite extensive research highlighting that child sexual abuse is a significant issue in every community, many parents and caregivers dismiss it as a distant problem, believing it happens to someone else, somewhere else. Read more.

Read this article

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The post Protecting Kids: Navigating a Hypersexualized World and Reducing Pornography Exposure. appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

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Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

The Link Between Child Abuse and Incarceration

Research reveals a striking pattern among incarcerated women: up to 66% report experiencing childhood sexual abuse,¹ more than double the rate found in the general female population (31%).² While multiple factors contribute to incarceration, this dramatic statistical disparity demands attention. The consistency and magnitude of this relationship across studies point to childhood sexual abuse as a significant risk factor in women's pathways to imprisonment. As the saying goes, “Correlation is not causation.” But this level of high correlation should give us pause.

How Trauma Shapes Coping Mechanisms

The line between child sexual abuse and incarceration is not hard to draw. When a child experiences abuse, their safety is violated. The natural response from their brain is to seek safety. The survival part of their brain will not discern between constructive and destructive coping behaviors. As a natural consequence, a child may attach to harmful or maladaptive coping behaviors such as substance use, eating disorders, or suicidal ideation. This becomes more likely as they grow into their teenage and adult years. Using substances as an example, the survivor, now addicted, resorts to criminal activity to feed the addiction, eventually finding themselves involved with the justice system.

Learn More About How Trauma Impacts Childhood Development

The effects of Child Sexual Abuse

About the Author

Chris Yadon

Managing Director

Chris Yadon is the Managing Director of Saprea, and is responsible for managing all operations and services of Saprea in both Utah and Georgia. Yadon has spent most of his professional career in start-up executive management with an emphasis in operations, marketing, and sales. Since joining Saprea in 2015, Yadon has brought a valuable skillset to the organization and is committed to addressing the epidemic of child sexual abuse. His expertise centers on increasing awareness arond this epidemic and educating the public on best practices for prevention and the healing services available to survivors. Yadon has been featured across several regional and national media platforms where he is often requested as an industry thought leader and expert.

Recent blogs

Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing

Research reveals a striking pattern among incarcerated women: up to 66% report experiencing childhood sexual abuse, more than double the rate found in the general female population (31%). While multiple factors contribute to incarceration, this dramatic statistical disparity demands attention.

Read this article

Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It

In my work addressing child sexual abuse, I see this phenomenon daily. Despite extensive research highlighting that child sexual abuse is a significant issue in every community, many parents and caregivers dismiss it as a distant problem, believing it happens to someone else, somewhere else. Read more.

Read this article

Common Symptoms Experienced by Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Childhood sexual abuse can have long-lasting debilitating effects throughout the life of a survivor. The impacts of sexual trauma are profound and far-reaching, affecting every aspect of an individual’s life—physically, psychologically, cognitively, and socially. But why is this so?

Read this article

SEE ALL blogs

The post Breaking the Link Between Child Sexual Abuse and Incarceration: A Path to Healing appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It

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Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It

Turning Proximity into Urgent Action

Reflecting on the experience with my eight-year-old son, it becomes evident how proximity and urgency intersect to drive meaningful change. The presenter's reference to research on early exposure to sexually explicit content, coupled with firsthand accounts from loved ones, brought the issue uncomfortably close to home. This proximity created a sense of urgency that compelled my wife and me to initiate "the talk" despite our apprehensions. Our urgency was motivated by the proximate risk to our son, and that urgency overcame our conflicting thoughts about whether that moment was the right time.

I wish I could say I nailed that “big talk,” but like most things in parenting, the first time didn’t go so well. Yet eighteen years later, my twenty-six-year-old son has a healthy perspective about his sexuality - formed by hundreds of subsequent “little talks” with us as parents. Like me, he also heard about sex through media, jokes from friends, and a grossly inadequate, awkward health class, but he was equipped to handle it because he had our balancing voice. Proximity and urgency had met, changing our parenting behavior when he was eight years old.

Reduce the Risk of Child Sexual Abuse

When parents are actively engaged in prevention education, the risk of child sexual abuse can significantly decrease.

Start the Conversation

Any significant change, whether a broad societal issue like child sexual abuse or an uncomfortable talk with my eight-year-old, requires urgency to motivate new patterns of behavior. Child sexual abuse is more prevelant in our lives than we might admit. Creating urgency through proximity can protect our kids. Start the conversation with your loved ones today and explore more parenting resources here.

About the Author

Chris Yadon

Managing Director

Chris Yadon is the Managing Director of Saprea, and is responsible for managing all operations and services of Saprea in both Utah and Georgia. Yadon has spent most of his professional career in start-up executive management with an emphasis in operations, marketing, and sales. Since joining Saprea in 2015, Yadon has brought a valuable skillset to the organization and is committed to addressing the epidemic of child sexual abuse. His expertise centers on increasing awareness arond this epidemic and educating the public on best practices for prevention and the healing services available to survivors. Yadon has been featured across several regional and national media platforms where he is often requested as an industry thought leader and expert.

Recent blogs

Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It

In my work addressing child sexual abuse, I see this phenomenon daily. Despite extensive research highlighting that child sexual abuse is a significant issue in every community, many parents and caregivers dismiss it as a distant problem, believing it happens to someone else, somewhere else. Read more.

Read this article

Common Symptoms Experienced by Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Childhood sexual abuse can have long-lasting debilitating effects throughout the life of a survivor. The impacts of sexual trauma are profound and far-reaching, affecting every aspect of an individual’s life—physically, psychologically, cognitively, and socially. But why is this so?

Read this article

Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse

In our work with individuals who were sexually abused, they often discuss the burden that comes with weighing difficult questions about when to come forward with details of the abuse they experienced. They wonder if they should take legal action or if that is even an option when the abuse occurred many years in the past.

Read this article

SEE ALL blogs

The post Why Parents Don’t See Child Sexual Abuse as a Problem—And How Proximity Can Fix It appeared first on Saprea.

Saprea > Blog > All Blogs > The Myth of the Abused Becoming Abusers

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The Myth of the Abused Becoming Abusers

Recent blogs

Common Symptoms Experienced by Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Childhood sexual abuse can have long-lasting debilitating effects throughout the life of a survivor. The impacts of sexual trauma are profound and far-reaching, affecting every aspect of an individual’s life—physically, psychologically, cognitively, and socially. But why is this so?

Read this article

Statute of Limitations on Sexual Abuse

In our work with individuals who were sexually abused, they often discuss the burden that comes with weighing difficult questions about when to come forward with details of the abuse they experienced. They wonder if they should take legal action or if that is even an option when the abuse occurred many years in the past.

Read this article

Effects of Child Sexual Abuse

As a clinician on the Saprea Clinical Intake team, I am often the first point of contact for anyone seeking one of our services. This gives me the opportunity to talk to many survivors of child sexual abuse. I’m often asked about specific effects of sexual abuse that the women I talk to are experiencing.

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The post The Myth of the Abused Becoming Abusers appeared first on Saprea.