NYS Child Care and Governor Hochul at the Democratic National Convention
On August 19, 2024, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul delivered a spirited speech in support of the presidential hopeful Kamala Harris at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. Quite surprisingly, Governor Hochul raised the specter of runaway child care costs as a common issue facing middle class Americans, which, in turn, raised questions about what the governor of New York will do to lower these costs here in the Empire State.
Invoking the “true New Yorkers”
NY Governor Kathy Hochul speaks at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. (Screenshot from NBC News video)
With the White House at stake in the upcoming US presidential election, Hochul reasonably spent one half of her speech lauding her immigrant parents and their working class roots in the “promised land” of Buffalo, NY. The governor praised the “grit, determination, and compassion” that she learned in her blue collar youth in Buffalo. “These values,” she said, “have always defined the people of my state [New York].”
Hochul painted a starkly different picture of Donald Trump. Though she acknowledged that Trump was “born a New Yorker,” she identified the Republican candidate as “a fraud, philanderer, and felon.” She explained that Trump “wasn’t raised with the New York values that I know. He never had to worry about child care costs, or groceries, or rent. He never had to worry about anything or anyone but himself.”
The governor’s comments about the socioeconomic status of “true New Yorkers” deserve further analysis. One inference is that New York is a blue collar state where immigrants can settle in working class towns like Buffalo, NY and raise a family (if not a community) through hard work. Second, Hochul seemed to suggest that if blue collar families persist in their efforts, they will overcome the challenges of runaway food, housing, and child care costs (and one of their children may even grow up to be governor). Finally, one might make a third inference: socioeconomically elite men and women – people like Trump, who have the financial resources to sidestep working class challenges – are not “true New Yorkers.”
The Specter of NYS Child Care
It was curious, however, for the governor to speak of the worries that child care costs caused her parents in the mid-20th century when these challenges persist in the first quarter of the 21st century, during her stint in the state’s highest office. Under Governor Hochul’s administration, working class New Yorkers still must worry about child care costs, just like her parents did. Child care costs are high for parents; child care wages are low for early childhood educators and child care professionals; and financial aid for parents and for child care business owners rarely if ever meet the true cost of care.
Author Steve Peraza with his Western New York Child Care Action Team swag. (Photo: Steve Peraza/Weave News)
Perhaps more troubling was Hochul’s allusion to Micron, a computer chip manufacturing company, planting its flag in Syracuse, New York. While recruiting the company to a small city in central New York was a political win for the governor, the impact on child care in central New York remains unclear. In 2022-2023, Hochul awarded Micron millions of dollars to build its own child care business. This construction-friendly strategy has become the poster child for child care reform, in large part because it subsidizes new economic development (but not necessarily workforce compensation).
A corollary to the Micron development has been New York State’s Child Care Capital Program, which has earmarked $50 million of “reimbursement grants for the design, construction, reconstruction, rehabilitation, equipment, and other capital assets for existing or proposed” child care centers and school-age child care programs. This is the “enterprise model” of child care in New York, which lets businesses outside of the child care industry collect NYS funding from the Division of Child Care Services.
The urgent need for workforce compensation
While it is instrumental for the state to provide capital for business developers in the industry, child care owners and advocates have been clear about what the industry needs: “Adopt the Senate and the Assembly one-house budget proposals to include $220 million in additional funds for the child care workforce.”
In a cash-strapped industry like child care, where many NYS parents rely on subsidies through the Child Care Assistance Program, and where child care advocates call for more workforce compensation, it is unclear to what degree subsidizing construction and development companies outside of the child care industry will improve child care for New York State parents and workers. Micron will be the bellwether (of the success or failure) of the child care enterprise model.
