Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday will unveil a plan to vastly expand free or affordable child care for New Yorkers across the state over the next several years.
In doing so, Ms. Hochul is partnering with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and putting him on a path toward realizing one of the central promises of his victorious campaign last year.
The goal of the multiyear plan, which Ms. Hochul is expected to introduce alongside the mayor in an appearance Thursday morning and will be a part of her State of the State address on Jan. 13, would be to one day offer universal access to children statewide, her office said. Investments in this year’s budget, which is due April 1, would create access for 100,000 more children, her office said, before the plan is expanded more broadly.
It comes days into the new mayoral term of Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist who ran on a promise to make child care free for all New Yorkers under the age of 5.
Despite their political differences, Mr. Mamdani and Ms. Hochul, a moderate Democrat, have identified the issue as an area of common ground, and Ms. Hochul highlighted the shared priority when she endorsed Mr. Mamdani last fall.
In her executive budget, Ms. Hochul will propose funding more pre-K seats across the state and increasing the funding for existing seats, in order to achieve universality for 4-year-olds by the beginning of the 2028-29 school year, her office said. While assistance exists today for some low-income parents, middle-class families outside the city are largely on their own.
The governor also said she planned to work with Mr. Mamdani to “fix the city’s 3K program” and make it truly universal. The program had faced cuts under former Mayor Eric Adams and does not currently serve all the families with 3-year-olds who may want or need to use it.
In addition, the city will begin what Ms. Hochul is calling “2 Care,” starting with “high-need areas selected by New York City and expanding to serve all families by year four.” Ms. Hochul has promised to fully fund the program for its first two years.
“Since taking office, I’ve put families front and center, fighting to make our state more affordable and laying the groundwork to deliver universal child care,” Ms. Hochul said in a statement.
Mr. Mamdani said in a recent interview that his three campaign priorities — freezing the rent for stabilized units, making buses free and universal child care — must “be accomplished by the time that I’m done being the mayor.”
“In order for that to be the case, we have to start taking real steps, especially when it comes to child care, early,” he said.
“Child care is not just a question of finding the funding,” he added. “It is also a question of building infrastructure and the apparatus around it, and that requires you to stage this, as opposed to being able to do it all in one swoop.”
There are a lot of unanswered questions about Ms. Hochul’s plan, particularly how much it will cost this year and in the years to follow. Aside from the complex logistics involved, implementing child care universal is expensive.
Mr. Mamdani has said that his vision of universal child care for every child from 6 months to 5 years old could cost $6 billion each year in New York City alone. Separate estimates have determined that universal child care across the state could cost as much as $15 billion annually once it is fully up and running.
Providers and policy experts were cheered on Thursday by the framework Ms. Hochul announced. Not only does it begin to expand availability, they said, it also takes meaningful steps toward shoring up existing parts of the system that have been underfunded.
“It’s huge,” said Peter Nabozny, director of policy for the Children’s Agenda. “It looks like they are committed to making some of the investments from a financial perspective, but then there are also the structural changes that are needed to help us get closer and closer to universal child care.”
Rebecca Bailin, executive director of New Yorkers United for Child Care, said that Mr. Mamdani deserved credit for making “child care a central campaign issue and a must-have for the state.”
The attention he drew to the issue dovetailed with Ms. Hochul’s earlier focus on helping New York families, she said. The result was a cacophony of support from elected officials of various ideological stripes and the generation of momentum to tackle one of the biggest expenses for families.
This plan, Ms. Bailin said, “offers a real path to making New York affordable for working families.”
The announcement comes at a significant moment for Ms. Hochul, who is up for re-election this year and contending with challenges from both her left and right.
Like Mr. Mamdani, Ms. Hochul has focused intently on making the state more affordable for New Yorkers. But she has been far more reluctant to raise taxes, particularly income taxes, which Mr. Mamdani wants to raise to provide funding for the expanded child care program and his other policy ambitions.
Even so, the soaring costs of child care are a salient issue that Mr. Mamdani hammered on his way to victory last year. Ms. Hochul hopes her focus on the issue and highlighting the billions she has already spent will help her this fall as well. She has also sought to focus attention on how many of these programs have been imperiled by cuts from the federal government.
“There’s one thing that every family in New York can agree on, the cost of child care is simply too high,” Ms Hochul said.
Ms. Hochul’s vision for expanding child care will be included in her executive budget proposal; she will then negotiate with legislative leaders over a final budget.
Her proposal would also look for ways to expand the voucher program that Ms. Hochul poured billions into in recent years and subsidizes care for lower-income families across the state. The program has a wait list in some parts of the state, and her office said she planned to add another $1.2 billion to the program to bring the total amount available to $3 billion.
In her State of the State, Ms. Hochul will announce several other initiatives related to child care, including the creation of a new Office of Child Care and Early Education. She wants to “expand and simplify the child and dependent care tax credit to provide an additional average benefit of $575 for 230,000 tax filers,” her office said. And she will announce several different ways she plans to help support and expand the work force of child care providers.
Grace Ashford contributed reporting.
Benjamin Oreskes is a reporter covering New York State politics and government for The Times.
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