No one showed up. After 20 minutes of silence, an agency official called the meeting to a close. Two weeks later, the subsidy deal was approved.

The kind of tax breaks JPMorganChase received, doled out by local agencies called industrial development agencies, were designed first and foremost to attract companies that bring steady jobs. Data centers — which require major investment but few workers — call that premise into question.

Perhaps no project raises the question as starkly as JPMorganChase’s data center expansion in Orangeburg. The $77 million subsidy is the largest of its kind, per job, in the country, according to watchdog groups. That figure represents sales taxes that JPMorganChase would otherwise be paying on materials and equipment for the billion-dollar project, with about half — $40 million — withheld from state coffers and the rest from localities.

“The county is giving away quite a lot of public money in exchange basically for nothing,” said Kasia Tarczynska, senior research analyst at the national subsidy watchdog group Good Jobs First.

Last month, the outlet Investigative Post reported that the per-job subsidies proposed for a massive data center in Genesee County, at more than $11 million, would be the largest in the country. The project has spurred local outrage and a bill from state lawmakers to rein in the tax breaks.

But the JPMorganChase deal quietly signed two years ago dwarfs even that amount.

The Rockland County IDA believes the deal will pay off. Executive director Steven Porath provided a cost-benefit analysis to New York Focus that found the data center would be a net gain for the county, yielding more than $100 million in local economic benefits.

Porath acknowledged that data centers — and JPMorganChase’s expansion in particular — create few permanent jobs, but said the project would generate more than 1,400 temporary construction jobs and require ongoing upgrades from skilled union electricians and other tradespeople.

“It’s a misconception to say there’s one person sitting in that data center,” he said.

Moreover, Porath said that assessing subsidies strictly in terms of cost per job is an “outdated” method that needs to evolve for today’s high-tech age.

“Anybody would look at it and say, one job does not justify $76 million in sales tax exemption,” he said. “If that is how you’re going to narrowly look at it… anybody would say that’s ridiculous. But that doesn’t take into account all the other economic factors of that data center sitting in our community.”

JPMorganChase did not respond to New York Focus’s questions.

Over the last decade, the small suburb of Orangeburg has become something of a data center hub. Straddling the Palisades Parkway, about 20 miles from Midtown Manhattan, it’s within striking distance of the world’s financial capital but less crowded than much of the New York City region. Bloomberg opened a data center there in 2014 and others soon followed, including JPMorganChase, which inked its first subsidy deal with the county IDA in 2017.

The bank came back to the IDA in early 2024 to support its expansion at the site, and construction is now underway; JPMorganChase has said it expects the facility to be complete by 2028. Like the bank’s original data center and others in the area, it will feed the heavy computing needs of the finance industry, for cybersecurity, trading, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

The bank’s facilities — both the existing one and the one currently under construction — sit on the sprawling site of a former psychiatric hospital. Its original subsidy deal included property tax breaks known as PILOTs with the county, municipality, and school district. (Porath said the company would likely seek an updated PILOT deal when the expansion is closer to done.) It also included about $35 million in state and county sales tax breaks, which the project had largely claimed by 2024, according to state data.

The facility last reported 25 workers, up from the five it originally promised. The tax breaks it received over its first eight years still amount to well over $1 million per job in subsidies.

The expansion deal is in another league. It makes the per-job subsidies on New York’s biggest, most controversial economic development projects — Micron’s chip fab complex near Syracuse and Tesla’s Gigafactory in Buffalo, for example — look tiny by comparison, according to a new analysis by the watchdog group Reinvent Albany.

John Kaehny, the group’s executive director, called it “totally crazy and irrational.”

“It’s hard to see this deal ever breaking even for the county,” he said.

In principle, IDAs have to carefully assess whether subsidies are needed to attract a certain project, or whether the business would likely set up shop in the area anyway. (Porath called this the “art” of economic development.) In practice, the agencies often fail to give projects the necessary scrutiny, the state comptroller has found.

JPMorganChase applied to the IDA for its expansion project in January 2024, providing only vague justification of why the nation’s largest bank needed subsidies to expand on its existing site, 25 miles from its brand-new global headquarters in Midtown Manhattan. The next month, it got the exact tax break it requested.

The data center is not a traditional IDA beneficiary. Unlike a manufacturing plant, which typically receives property tax breaks in exchange for creating a steady base of good-paying jobs, data centers are crammed full of cutting-edge computer hardware, but few people to operate it. That makes sales tax breaks — which help defray the massive cost of chips and other equipment — particularly valuable to them.

Sales tax exemptions have historically represented a small part of New York’s local economic development subsidies overall, but make up the lion’s share of recent data center deals. Two other data center complexes under development in Orangeburg are also benefiting from them. Morgan Stanley and Natixis banks are setting up shop in a facility operated by the company 1547 Critical Systems Realty, and the AI cloud company CoreWeave is leasing part of a new facility developed by the company DataBank. Each company has its own deal with the IDA.

While the Orangeburg data centers are small compared to some of the AI megaprojects being developed around the country, activists worry that they could drive up utility costs and potentially contaminate drinking water with chemicals they use for cooling. (DataBank’s site overlooks a reservoir that supplies drinking water to New Jersey.)

A late March planning board meeting about Databank’s proposal for a second facility on its site was packed with opponents, who raised concerns about water and noise pollution and the impact on electric bills.

“We are overly saturated with data centers,” one resident told the board, according to The Journal News. “There is no talk of the cost to us, the local utility ratepayers.”

Advocates with the group Food & Water Watch, which has been rallying local residents, want a halt on all data center projects until the environmental impacts can be fully assessed. (Moratoriums have been proposed at both the state and national level.)

“Doing nothing with that land is likely better than putting that data center on there, because of the infrastructure strain it puts on the people,” said Ben Murray, a researcher at Food & Water Watch who has helped coordinate the group’s work against data centers across the country.

Murray said his group has been keeping an eye on the data center subsidies, which he called a “classic race to the bottom.”

But the subsidies have gotten little notice in general. The Rockland County IDA has held one empty hearing after another on proposed tax breaks, including one just a few months ago on a $19 million data center deal with Morgan Stanley that is due to create four full-time jobs.

Porath said he wishes more people would show up.

“If the public came out in force and said they want to participate and they want more discussion about it, I’d be the first [to say], ‘Okay, what do we gotta do to accommodate that?’” he said.

A bill introduced by state Senator Rachel May and Assemblymember Anna Kelles this spring would cap IDA subsidies at $500,000 per job, and bar the agencies from giving subsidies to projects that consume more than 100 megawatts of power. It would also block data centers from getting state-subsidized power and increase environmental oversight for large facilities and those located near Indian nations.

May said the bill was inspired by the major data center proposed for the STAMP industrial park in western New York. (At 500 megawatts, it would be about 10 times the size of the largest data center under development in Rockland County, and neighbors the Tonawanda Seneca Nation.)

Kaehny, of Reinvent Albany, said it would be simpler just to ban IDAs from abating state sales taxes. Giving local officials power over state revenue “doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “It’s not something they’re elected to do.”

Porath, for his part, says Rockland County is just following the rules as they’ve been set out. And he maintains that deals like the one the IDA has given to JPMorganChase are paying dividends for the county, turning an asbestos-filled site that wasn’t paying any taxes into one that is pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars per year into local schools and other services.

He knows that many people don’t see it the same way.

“It’s very easy to have agencies drink their own Kool Aid,” he said. “The trick is to look back objectively and say, ‘Okay, is this in the interest of Rockland County?’”

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.

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. They’re 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 them 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.”

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.

For two years, Modou had compiled evidence that, if the United States deported him to his home country of Senegal, he’d face persecution for marrying someone of a different faith. In his asylum application, he’d meticulously described the violence and death threats he’d faced, supporting his story with medical and government records, certificates, news articles, and testimony from family and friends.

Yet in January, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lawyer petitioned the judge in Modou’s case to throw out his claim before the court could even consider it.

Instead of Senegal, ICE wanted to send Modou to Uganda, 4,500 miles from his home country. He’d never been to Uganda, or even thought of visiting. He and his lawyer scrambled; they had just a few weeks to argue a whole new case.

In the courthouse hallway, Modou’s attorney coached him in whispers.

“They’re not going to ask you anything about Senegal,” she told him. “Don’t even bring it up.”

She drilled him on the questions an ICE cross-examiner would likely ask.

“Why are you afraid of going to Uganda if you’ve never even been there?” she posed.

Modou hesitated: “Because I’m a Muslim?” His hands shook. It was Ramadan and he’d been fasting.

After a 30-minute hearing, Modou and his lawyer emerged from the courtroom. The judge ruled that the government could send him to Uganda. His lawyer had told him before his hearing that the judge would likely decide in ICE’s favor, but that didn’t alleviate the shock. “I’m scared,” he said. Modou, whom New York Focus is identifying with a pseudonym to avoid jeopardizing his case, is appealing.

Modou is one of tens of thousands of immigrants across the US who are facing rendition to countries they’re not from and often have never visited. To facilitate the third-country removals, federal attorneys are petitioning courts to throw out asylum seekers’ original cases before they have a chance to argue them. The tactic allows ICE to quickly deny or abandon asylum claims, even as it struggles to follow through on the actual renditions.

In New York state, the one-two punch is widespread and disproportionately affecting African asylum seekers like Modou, according to immigration court statistics that Joseph Gunther, an independent researcher, and Brandon Morrow of the data service bklg compiled for New York Focus. Of the roughly 2,350 African asylum seekers with hearings in New York between December and February, just under 50 percent were subject to motions to abandon their cases and, in most cases, send them to a third country. For those from Latin America, that number was about 29 percent.

Of the African cases whose motions were ruled on, judges approved about 66 percent — with most granting removal to Uganda.

The cases are dismissed through a legal process known as a “pretermission.” The technique was rarely employed before last year, when the Department of Justice, which runs the immigration court system, issued a policy memo that encouraged immigration judges to accept pretermission motions. In November, motions to pretermit asylum cases skyrocketed.

In the motions, ICE attorneys point to agreements the Trump administration has signed with other countries to take asylum seekers the US wants to deport. Since those third countries state they can safely accept the migrants, the government lawyers argue, asylum seekers’ claims that they face harm if returned to their home countries are moot. Aside from Uganda for Africans, the Trump administration has signed the agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and Ecuador, where it is seeking to send Latin Americans.

ICE has sent roughly 50 third-country nationals to Guatemala, 140 to Honduras, and an undisclosed number to Ecuador, but it hasn’t yet sent any non-Ugandans to Uganda. That’s due in part to the fact that Uganda has not released an implementation plan outlining how it would provide safe conditions and paths to asylum for the deportees from the US.

The future of the practice remains unclear: Last week an ICE memo reportedly instructed attorneys to pause the tactic, though it didn’t say for how long.

The practice is also being challenged in federal court. The lawsuit, originally filed against the first Trump administration, claims that the countries with which the US has entered into the agreements don’t qualify as safe places to seek asylum. In the case of Uganda, the plaintiffs point out that the US’s own State Department describes extrajudicial killings and torture of dissidents and death penalties and imprisonment for homosexuality in Uganda.

Some Ugandan officials have also pushed back against the arrangement. The day before the agreement was officially announced in August, the Ugandan minister of state for foreign affairs told Reuters that the country does “not have the facilities and infrastructure to accommodate” the asylees. Uganda already hosts nearly 2 million refugees — more than any other African country. After funding shortfalls left it unable to feed them, the country closed its borders to new refugees from multiple neighboring countries late last year.

Despite the lack of follow-through thus far, African asylum seekers remain terrified of the potential choice between deportation to a country they fled and rendition to a country they know little about. West Africans are trying to make sense of why a judge told them that they’d be sent to Uganda when the government hasn’t sent anyone there yet.

“Nobody understands,” Modou said. “Everyone is just talking about Uganda, Uganda, Uganda.”

For immigration attorneys, pretermission cases are exceptionally difficult to prepare. A strong asylum claim usually requires evidence that one has already suffered persecution at the hands of specific people. That’s nearly impossible for someone who has never been to the country where they fear persecution, even if their fear is well-founded.

Pretermission cases also face an accelerated timeline. ICE attorneys are filing their motions with almost no lead-time before a hearing, blowing past deadlines set by judges, said Melanie Zamenhof, senior attorney at Neighbors Link Community Law Practice.

“Sometimes it is the morning of, one hour before, or literally an oral motion made at that moment,” Zamenhof said.

That often leaves attorneys just days or even hours to respond to a pretermission motion and argue that an entirely new country is unsafe for their clients. For standard asylum cases, most clients work with their attorneys for at least a year to prepare material.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

For their part, judges move quickly on scheduling and deciding pretermission cases. Half of the African cases that received a pretermission motion between November 2025 and January 2026 were decided by January 31, according to Gunther and Morrow’s analysis. Nearly nine in 10 of those cases received a ruling in under 30 days, and one in 10 was decided on the same day the motion was filed.

For Modou’s case, his attorney, Stefi Bastiaensz, filed over 200 pages of affidavits, reports, and articles on Uganda to argue that the country can’t offer Modou safety — all in about three weeks.

Zamenhof said that some of the strongest cases she’s handled in her career are getting pretermitted. “For folks who did everything the right way, at any time prior to a hearing, the judge can just put their case in the trash,” she said. She described burnout and turnover among her colleagues as they buckle under the weight of the increased workload.

Zamenhof is currently representing a family of five from West Africa. The father, Alpha, whom New York Focus is also identifying with a pseudonym to avoid jeopardizing his case, came to the US with his pregnant wife and two of their children. He left his career as a surgeon after he and his family received threats and were attacked because of their ethnicity and his opposition to the government, he said. He has been trying for two and a half years to transfer his certifications and begin practicing medicine again. He often works multiple jobs, including one as an assistant manager at a Dollar Tree.

Alpha and his wife each filed their own asylum claims, both of which ICE attorneys sought to dismiss in order to send the family to Uganda. “I was so, so afraid,” Alpha said. He’s been speaking with other African asylum seekers in the same situation. “A lot of people are saying they would rather be in prison here than in Uganda,” he said.

A judge denied the motion to abandon Alpha’s case, but granted it for his wife’s case. He said that he hasn’t told his kids about the judge’s decision and wasn’t sure what would happen to his US citizen baby if his wife was sent to Uganda or he was deported.

Alpha has a final asylum hearing scheduled for this month. The family is hoping that he’ll win and that he can add his wife to his asylum application.

While he waits for the judge’s decision, Alpha said that he’s trying to lay low. Just recently, he said, a customer spit on his face while he was working. When his coworkers asked him why he didn’t fight back, he said, “We are not coming here to have problems. We are coming here to be alive.”

But there was a silver lining for the show’s producers. About a year after “KPOP” closed, the State of New York awarded them $1.9 million. Taxpayers subsidized the show for an amount that comes out to more than $110,000 per performance, thanks to the New York City Musical and Theatrical Production Tax Credit.

The program began as a one-year, $100 million lifeline during the pandemic, which shut Broadway down for 18 months. It has been extended three times since. Now, Governor Hochul is proposing to grow the program by $150 million, bringing the state’s total outlay to $550 million through mid-2027 — even as Broadway attendance and revenues surpass pre-pandemic levels.

More than two dozen Broadway producers and other industry figures donated over $240,000 to Hochul’s re-election campaign last fall, a few months before she made her proposal public, New York Focus previously reported. State lawmakers have asked few questions and appear likely to approve the extra funding, despite a 2023 state-commissioned study that found the tax break generated just 23 cents for every dollar the state invested.

State leaders have defended the credit as a crucial tool for sustaining the theater industry during the pandemic, along with the enormous tourist sector it helps support. Producers say the credit remains essential for attracting investors — helping wobbly productions stay in business, hire workers, and attract tourists. They also note that the 2023 study concluded the expense might ultimately be worth it, given the impact of Broadway on local businesses like hotels and restaurants.

The state does not publicly announce which productions have received the credit. But a list obtained by New York Focus through a freedom of information request shows that the state sent $308 million to 129 different Broadway shows and 21 Off-Broadway shows between August 2022 and February 2026.

They include long-running hits like “Chicago,” but also a notable number of flops — raising questions about the program’s effectiveness.

The 2024 musical “Tammy Faye” closed after 29 performances but received $2.5 million from the state earlier this year. The musical “Lempicka” got $2.6 million after its monthlong 2024 run. “Mrs. Doubtfire,” which had 77 performances across a pandemic-interrupted run, received the maximum $3 million.

All told, the state has given at least $179 million to Broadway shows that had fewer than 200 performances each. Of the 150 total shows that have received the credit, all but 15 have closed, according to the data.

The program has also attracted criticism from the opposite direction: for throwing money at shows that would likely have succeeded anyway. The New York Times noted in 2024 that top-grossing shows like “The Lion King,” “The Book of Mormon,” and “Wicked” each got the maximum $3 million. Weeks after that article was published, “Chicago” received the maximum award as well, according to the updated list obtained by New York Focus.

Empire State Development, the state corporation that administers the benefit, defended the spending.

“Broadway’s comeback after the pandemic was driven by investment in the people who make it run — the stagehands, musicians, costumers, and crews who were out of work for nearly two years,” ESD spokesperson Emily Mijatovic said. “This program helped bring those workers back and support new productions across the city. Every show that comes to New York, regardless of how long it runs, supports jobs and strengthens the city’s theater economy.”

Focusing on programs with short runs is misleading, ESD argued, since limited-run productions have long been part of live theater and New York’s program was not designed to support only shows with a certain lifespan.

Several watchdog groups have urged the state not to put more money into the program or extend it past its current 2027 sunset date. The fiscally conservative Citizens Budget Commission tolerated the program as an emergency measure in 2021, but opposes its expansion now that the industry has recovered.

“The intent of the program has shifted to help cover costs, as opposed to when it was first created, which was explicitly to help Broadway recover and reopen from the pandemic,” said Sean Campion, CBC’s director of housing and economic development studies.

The Broadway League, the industry’s main trade group, declined to comment. The group, which represents theater owners and producers, has argued that far fewer investors would be willing to fund high-risk shows without the tax credit.

Philip Boroff, who covers the theater industry as editor of the website Broadway Journal, said it’s inevitable that some state money has been spent on short-lived shows, given the program’s goal of boosting the whole sector.

“Whether the runs are short or long, the advocates for the tax credit would say it’s doing its job in making investing on Broadway more attractive,” he said. “It is probably true that in some cases, short runs are a little bit longer because of the tax credit, because there is an incentive in running longer.”

Hochul proposed the additional $150 million infusion in January as part of her executive budget in response to reports that the state’s fund had unexpectedly run dry, two years before its June 2027 end date. The Broadway League has called for extending the tax credit through 2029 and restoring it to $100 million per year, its original funding level. (The more recent extensions under Hochul cut the program to $50 million per year.)

Both the state Assembly and Senate included Hochul’s expansion in their one-house budget proposals this month, meaning it’s highly likely to be approved. State Senator James Skoufis, one of the tax break’s few vocal critics, said the money spent on short-lived productions highlights “a fundamental problem” with the program: that the jobs it sustains are themselves short-lived.

“To sustain one person’s job, you need multiple iterations of this credit,” said Skoufis, a Hudson Valley Democrat. “For one individual to remain employed in this profession, they might need, over the course of their career, 10, 11, 15 shots of the Broadway tax credit. So the true per-job subsidy is, in reality, off the charts.”

Although it’s administered as a tax credit, the program works more like a grant, since the state reimburses shows for their expenses regardless of how much they paid in taxes. Producers can be reimbursed for employees’ salaries, production costs like sets and costumes, and advertising spending.

The program’s rules require the most successful shows to repay the state up to half the money they received once they reach a certain profitability threshold — if their revenues are twice as much as their costs after receiving the full benefit from the state. But more than five years into the program’s history, no shows have triggered that provision yet, according to ESD.

Meanwhile, shows produced by nonprofit organizations are ineligible for the credit, as are other performance arts like opera and ballet. Several nonprofit theaters have figured out a workaround by creating for-profit corporations to receive the credit, the news site Broadway World reported.

The Broadway tax credit barely came up during an eight-hour budget hearing on the state’s economic development programs last month. State Senator Erik Bottcher said he supports the expansion but asked ESD President Hope Knight what reports or data backed up the proposal.

Knight called Broadway “synonymous with New York” and said it sustains thousands of jobs, but shared no specific figures.

“It’s important that Broadway stays strong,” she said.

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.’”

Senate and Assembly Democrats are so far rejecting Governor Kathy Hochul’s push for a budget-season rollback of the state’s climate mandates, and are instead seeking renewed funding to keep inching the state toward its emissions targets.

As expected, neither chamber included language in their responses to Hochul’s budget proposal — known as “one-house budgets” — that would amend New York’s flagship climate law. They are both seeking to add $1 billion in funding for the clean energy transition, renewing a major commitment from last year’s budget that Hochul left out this year.

While lawmakers await Hochul’s next move on climate rollbacks, the two chambers’ unified $1 billion push — a key demand from advocates — sets up this year’s clearest fight over New York’s next steps on the green transition.

Like last year, the largest share of that pot would go toward cutting pollution from buildings, including a notable boost for the Empower Plus program, which funds efficiency upgrades for low- and moderate-income households, and neighborhood-scale electrification projects known as “thermal energy networks.” Smaller portions would go to clean transportation and renewable energy efforts, though the two chambers don’t fully agree on which ones.

The Senate also once again said it wants the state to move ahead with a longer-term climate funding plan — the carbon pricing program known as cap and invest, which Hochul unexpectedly shelved at the start of last year — but didn’t include any specific legislative language to advance it. (The Assembly made no mention of cap and invest.)

Senate energy committee chair Kevin Parker, speaking to New York Focus ahead of the one-house budgets’ release on Monday, said Hochul’s efforts to amend the climate law were “misguided.”

“I’m for moving ahead with cap and invest, and I think there’s… a lot of different areas in which you can address [climate] without pushing back the timetables,” he said.

That attitude is reflected in the wide array of new energy and climate measures the Senate and Assembly proposed.

The Assembly is taking major swings on energy affordability, proposing a whopping $2.6 billion in bill rebates to low-income customers through a new program. And it is seeking a two-year freeze on all electric and gas rate hikes — an entirely new proposal.

The Senate is pitching a more modest $200 million in rate relief through an existing program. And it wants to keep, but tweak, other utility reforms Hochul has put on the table — such as tying CEO pay to bill affordability — whereas the Assembly set those aside.

Both chambers want to set aside $1 million for consumer watchdog groups participating in utility rate hike proceedings. Hochul has vetoed a standalone bill to create such a program three times, but its inclusion in budget talks could change the calculus. The Assembly also wants to create a new utility consumer advocate’s office in state government, reviving another piece of legislation Hochul has repeatedly vetoed; the Senate did not include it.

The legislature is on board with Hochul’s Excelsior Power proposal, which would put $33 million toward bill rebates for customers who enroll smart thermostats with their utilities, as part of an effort to make the electric grid more flexible. But they want additional guardrails on the program, to protect customers’ privacy and guarantee that they would be able to override utilities’ control of their thermostats. (The Senate and Assembly proposals vary on the specifics.)

The Senate, meanwhile, wants to make it easier and cheaper to plug local solar projects into the grid, and to create rebates for heat pumps, e-bikes, and used electric cars.

Climate advocates have applauded the two chambers’ proposals, starting with their decisions to stand by the climate law.

Liz Moran, New York policy advocate for Earthjustice, said in a statement that the law “is not responsible for higher energy bills, and should not be negotiated under the darkness of the budget process.”

The business group Upstate United, for its part, called the legislature’s stance “infuriating.”

“Any measure that ignores the unconscionable cost increases associated with Cap-and-Invest should be dead on arrival,” the group wrote in a statement, referring to the $4,000 per household price tag that Hochul’s administration claims could result from a maximal version of the program.

None of the budget proposals include anything on two of Hochul’s flagship energy proposals this year: building new nuclear plants and regulating data centers. (Those proposals are advancing through agency regulations.) The Assembly did put forward a new excise tax on cryptocurrency mining, which it says could raise $380 million a year and help fund energy bill rebates.

While climate advocates cheered at seeing so many of their priorities reflected in the budget proposals, Parker noted that the documents remain “aspirational.”

“We put a stake in the ground on certain positions,” he said. “But we’re not building the building until the three of us can agree where it goes.”

This week, the two legislative chambers released their counters to Governor Kathy Hochul’s executive budget. The biggest disagreement is on taxes; the legislature is once again proposing hikes on wealthy people and corporations to fund expanded social programs. This year, they have a notable ally in their corner: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has aggressively pushed for more state revenue to help close the city’s budget gap. All eyes are on Hochul, who has so far resisted the idea.

But there’s much more to the battle than the headline numbers. Each of the three proposals are thousands of pages long, and they don’t make for light reading. We’ve been working around the clock to break them down for you.

In the chart below, you can see where each party stands on the highest-profile issues. Below that, you can find written descriptions using the drop-down menus. Happy budget season!

By Joan Tabachnick

We are excited to share an important opportunity for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the field of sexual abuse prevention. Sexual Abuse is now inviting submissions for a special issue on “What Works in the Prevention of Sexual Abuse?”

This issue, guest edited by Kieran McCartan, Ryan T. Shields, and Joan Tabachnick, will shine a spotlight on primary perpetration prevention—programs, policies, and practices designed to stop sexual abuse before anyone is harmed.

Join the Conversation

By bringing together evidence, practice, and innovation, this special issue aims to build a stronger foundation to answer the vital question: What truly works to prevent the perpetration of sexual abuse?

We invite researchers, practitioners, and thought leaders from around the world to contribute to this conversation by submitting a Letter of Intent by September 25, 2025.

Why This Special Issue Matters

Preventing the perpetration of sexual abuse is one of the most critical yet challenging areas of work. Unlike treatment or response strategies, primary prevention often requires proving that “something didn’t happen”—an outcome that can be difficult to measure.

Yet across the globe, innovative programs, interventions, and policies are being developed to reduce risk, strengthen protective factors, and create safer communities. This special issue seeks to bring those successes, research, evaluations, and innovations together in one place to help shape the future of perpetration prevention efforts.

Topics of Interest

We welcome contributions that critically examine and expand our understanding of primary perpetration prevention, including but not limited to:

• Evidence of success in primary perpetration prevention programs, including meaningful outcome measures.
• Lessons learned from past prevention efforts—and how they can guide the future.
• Risk and protective factors for first-time perpetration of sexual abuse.
• The role of public messaging, policy, and science in prevention.
• Implementation challenges: overcoming politics, stigma, and sustainability issues.
• Global perspectives: cultural and regional insights that broaden the scope of prevention.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Aniss Benelmouffok, Managing Editor of Sexual Abuse: aniss@atsa.com

Together, we can deepen the science of prevention, learn from one another, and build safer futures for individuals, families, and communities worldwide.

To frame these ideas, she draws on two concepts:

     •    Memes and Memeplexes: Coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, “memes” are self-replicating cultural units that spread and evolve like genes. Memeplexes—like religions and political ideologies—are networks of related memes.
     •    Mimetic Desire: Introduced by René Girard, this concept suggests we desire what others desire, emulating “models” in our social spheres. This can lead to rivalry and scapegoating.

Asparouhova proposes that if we take these two concepts as "canon," we can see how the internet has poured fuel on them. "Rather than ushering in an era of global peace, the internet made us leap at each other's throats," she says. 

 

What Are Anti-Memes?

Anti-memes are cultural ideas that resist spreading—often because they disrupt social harmony. Asparouhova writes, “Networks have a strong built-in immunity to anti-memes,” noting that these ideas tend to be suppressed because of their disruptive power.

Prevention—especially when it comes to sexual violence—is inherently antimemetic. Like disaster preparedness or gun violence prevention, it rarely garners sustained public or political support unless a recent tragedy has captured public attention. ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention offers a structured approach to breaking through this “immunity” and reshaping how we talk about sexual harm.

Asparouhova herself points to how prevention is deprioritized in public discourse and policy. Consider how media attention surges and fades after mass shootings—or how funding for disaster preparedness lags until catastrophe strikes. Prevention doesn’t spread easily because it requires uncomfortable conversations and long-term thinking—both of which challenge the fast-paced, reactive nature of contemporary communications.

The same is true for conversations about treating individuals who have caused sexual harm. These conversations demand we acknowledge the harm sexual abuse has caused, to consider the harm that may occur, and requires frameworks grounded in science that address its prevalence in our communities.

ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention

ATSA's Roadmap to Talking About Perpetration Prevention is a guide for turning anti-memetic ideas into meaningful conversations. It encourages professionals to lead with values—to explain why they work with people who have sexually harmed others or are at risk to. It provides structure for conversations that highlight our shared goal: ending sexual violence.

Although designed for ATSA members, this roadmap is for anyone ready to talk about prevention with nuance and purpose. It:
     •    Emphasizes collaboration with individuals affected by trauma
     •    Draws on decades of clinical research and evidence-based practice
     •    Makes prevention the focal point of our work—not an afterthought

Why We Need Champions

So how do anti-memes break through? Asparouhova’s answer: Champions. These are people who know how to navigate complex systems and bring difficult ideas into broader conversations. Champions help anti-memes find traction beyond their niche communities.

She writes:
“But to the right champion, even the most labyrinthine system feels like an invitation to create something extraordinary... You will know it when looking at the problem makes your heart expand with possibilities, rather than shrink away.”

If you’re reading this, you might be that champion. Because prevention faces many challenges —we need people willing to carry the message.

A Final Note

The ideas in the roadmap aren’t always easy to share. They’re disruptive. They challenge deeply held beliefs. They’re anti-memes. But they also carry the potential to transform lives and communities.
 
This year, we've been highlighting Changemakers within the ATSA community. Members who have embraced the challenge of sharing the message of sexual abuse treatment and prevention to transform their communities.  I hope you'll join them in sharing these ideas with conviction, even when they're difficult to express. ATSA has your back with evidence-based resources and professional media support when needed—that's how change begins.