Economic development with a focus on MWBEs (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)
As Governor Hochul and lawmakers in Albany work toward a new state budget, meaningful conversations are occurring on a wide range of critical issues from housing to workforce development to sustainability to health care and more. New York has long been at the forefront of advancing consequential progressive policies in these and other areas. But given the current political dynamic and the historic diversity of our state government, we have a tremendous opportunity to leverage this important process to address long-standing inequities that have persisted across New York.
Take housing, for example. We know that New York is in a housing crisis. Governor Hochul has proposed an ambitious plan to create 800,000 new homes across the state over ten years. While some suburban lawmakers have pushed back on the Governor’s Housing Compact, falsely claiming it will be the end of single-family homes, the plan must move forward.
But it also has to go further.
Homeownership has been a critical driver of generational wealth, but that door was closed to Black, Latino, and Asian New Yorkers historically. To help close the racial wealth gap, the state must restore funding for the Homeownership Protection Program (HOPP) and introduce other mechanisms to grow and protect homeownership, particularly among New Yorkers of color.
We also can’t forget about our existing affordable housing stock. That means replacing the expired J-51 program with a viable alternative that will facilitate the preservation of and needed capital improvements to affordable rental homes.
When it comes to our fragile economic recovery, small businesses – especially minority- and women-owned businesses (MWBEs) – continue to lag behind. New York State has the ability and responsibility to make it easier for minority- and women-owned business enterprises to do business, including by enacting the Governor’s proposal to increase the discretionary purchase threshold for MWBEs to $1.5 million from its current levels of $1 million in New York City and $500,000 across the rest of the state.
Finally, we have seen how low-income New Yorkers and New Yorkers of color continue to be worse-off than their neighbors when it comes to the quality of the air and water in their communities, and when it comes to health outcomes.
In recent months, New York State Homes and Community Renewal announced the Climate Friendly Homes Fund (CFHF), which will invest $250 million to electrify at least 10,000 units of multifamily housing in economically disadvantaged communities. This is a historic step, and one New York should expand upon. For the sake of future generations of New Yorkers, it is imperative the state identify and implement other promising opportunities to make our communities more sustainable.
This month is vitally important in terms of determining who we are as a state and where we are going in the future. As the leader of a non-profit organization that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years to create affordable housing, help New Yorkers buy their first homes, support small businesses, and expand sustainability measures in communities from New York City to Buffalo, I know what it will take to achieve all we’ve talked about. But it is so important that we succeed, and I am confident we can get it done together.
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Valerie White is the Senior Executive Director of LISC NY. On Twitter @LISC_NYC.
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Gov. Hochul in the classroom (photo: Kevin P. Coughlin/Governor's Office)
When does childhood begin? For at least a half-century, that question has been one of the most contentious in American politics, with participants in debates over abortion and reproductive rights variously arguing that conception, viability, birth, or any number of other milestones marks the point at which a fetus becomes a child entitled to the full protection of the law.
But pretty much everyone agrees that whenever childhood begins, it’s well before age 4.
Yet under New York law, children under the age of 4 are categorically ineligible for the state child tax credit, making New York the only state in the nation with a child credit that excludes infants and toddlers. Both the State Senate and Assembly endorsed proposals this month that would fix that flaw, but Governor Kathy Hochul’s budget for fiscal year 2024 maintains the exclusion of New York’s youngest children from the credit, which maxes out at $330 per year.
As the governor and Legislature race to finalize the fiscal year 2024 budget by the April 1 deadline, Hochul and state lawmakers face a choice: Will they seize the opportunity to extend the full child credit to New York’s youngest and poorest kids? Or will infants and toddlers lose out once again to well-heeled industry groups in the Albany budget scrum?
The exclusion of infants and toddlers dates back to 2006, when New York lawmakers first enacted a state credit for families with kids in the 4-to-16 age range. No one has offered a plausible rationale — other than cost saving — for the exclusion. Social science research indicates that early childhood is the period in which material deprivation is most harmful to a child’s long-term development — and thus the life stage at which low-income families are most in need of financial support.
New York’s child credit has another curious feature: low-income families with kids ages 4 through 16 receive a smaller amount than middle- and upper-middle-income families with children in that age range. As a result of this “phase-in” — which the Senate and Assembly proposals would leave in place — a family with two children must earn at least $16,333 to receive the full credit. The neediest families — those with no income — receive only $100 per eligible child.
The Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University estimates that extending the credit to children under four and eliminating the phase-in feature would cost $270 million to $320 million per year. That’s a drop in the bucket relative to Hochul’s $227 billion budget plan — well less than 0.2% of the total.
In the short-term, that investment would make a meaningful dent in New York’s childhood poverty problem, lifting roughly 40,000 kids — and their families — above the poverty threshold, as defined by the Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty measure.
And in the long-term, as the Columbia researchers showed, child tax credits for low-income families yield benefits to society that far exceed the costs. Kids whose families receive credits and similar cash transfers are more likely to finish college and less likely to end up in prison. Their lifetime earnings rise as well.
So why has the governor rebuffed proposals to expand the state credit thus far?
Hochul hasn’t said she opposes the extension of the credit to infants and toddlers, and she hasn’t defended the phase-in feature that prevents low-income families from claiming the full amount. Instead, she has decided that other tax and spending items take priority — such as her proposal to increase the state’s film and television tax credit by $380 million a year.
It’s no exaggeration, then, to say that the governor is putting film and TV producers before infants and toddlers. For the price tag of her film and TV tax incentive plan, she could extend the child credit to the youngest New Yorkers, eliminate the income phase-in, and still have tens of millions of dollars to spare.
Unfortunately, infants and toddlers can’t hire high-priced lobbyists to do their bidding in Albany. And low-income families lack the political power that industries like film and television wield.
Hopefully, the governor will decide that even if the political benefits are small, there is a compelling moral case for extending the child credit to low-income families with young children. If she decides instead that favored industries should take priority over low-income families, she might not face significant political blowback. But she will have to face her conscience.
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Daniel Hemel is a law professor at New York University. On Twitter @danieljhemel.
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At the shoot (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)
Working in this industry for over two decades, I’ve seen what it takes for a viral television show or blockbuster film to be made. While people normally consider the creatives of the film industry — actors, writers, and producers — there are thousands of jobs, just like mine, behind the scenes that help small and large-scale productions go off without a hitch. While the film industry itself employs tens of thousands of people in New York, the larger, parallel ecosystem that helps these glamorous productions run like a well-oiled machine, employs even more.
Part of what has helped build film and TV production into a multi-billion-dollar industry in New York is the New York Film Tax Credit program, which incentivizes production companies to invest in New York by choosing to film here. Over the past few decades, this program has been critical in creating quality jobs for New Yorkers, jobs that are largely unionized, high paying, and many do not require a four-year degree. That’s why it’s absolutely critical that state government in Albany pass Governor Hochul’s film tax credit expansion, as it will help to support tens of thousands of high-quality jobs that New Yorkers need.
Research from the New York Production Alliance and NYU Wagner’s Rubin Center for Transportation Policy and Management highlights how directly the economic impacts of New York’s film industry have been tied to the Empire State Film Production Tax Credit program.
Prior to the credit’s introduction in 2004, New York struggled to keep up with competition from other states and countries offering lower costs for film production. But from 2004-2018, statewide wage-and-salary employment in film and TV production rose by 52.3%, resulting in an increase of 17,000 jobs. With an increased demand for such roles as the sector has grown in the state, Governor Hochul’s tax credit plan also allocates funds to maintain and expand the high-quality workforce we have here in New York, including career development programs to make film sets reflect the diversity of New York.
Additionally, the enactment of the tax credit helped to pave the way for increased investment in production facilities, both old and new. This has resulted in the creation of over 6,000 jobs (both direct and indirect) in 2019-2022 alone.
As these tax credits offset the higher costs of these productions, they also result in direct investment in the communities in which they film. This supports the hundreds of small businesses and jobs that exist in order to keep the productions up and running. From restaurants that cater meals to supplies to build sets, there are many necessities for the film industry to execute projects.
I’ve seen how resilient the New York City film industry is in the darkest days our city has lived through. While many industries in 2008 saw a downturn, film went up over 50%. While Hurricane Sandy temporarily halted production and live audience filming, the industry came back stronger than ever less than a week after it made landfall. Most recently, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which kept people apart for months, film came back earlier than a number of other industries, thanks to the implementation of extensive health and safety protocols. But, none of this happened overnight, and it is attributed to thousands of New Yorkers across the film industry that supported one another, bringing entertainment to those around the country and the world.
State leaders: let’s not let the curtain go down on an industry that has brought such economic and cultural value to our state.
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Flo Mitchell-Brown is the Head of Industry Engagement at Extreme Reach and the chair of the New York Production Alliance. On Twitter @NYPAnys.
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