B-Roll, Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Announces $500 Million Investment in FY 2024 Budget to Bolster New York's Child Care Workforce

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced a $500 million investment in the FY 2024 Budget to bolster New York's child care workforce through the Workforce Retention Grant Program. Funding from the program will support 150,000 child care workers and can be used to provide bonus payments ranging from $2,300 to $3,000 to staff in caregiving roles, as well as to recruit new staff, offer sign-on and referral bonuses, and more. Applications will open on July 13. Governor Hochul made the announcement in Brooklyn during a visit to Vivvi, a child care provider based in New York City. The Governor also highlighted additional investments in the Budget to make child care more affordable and expand access for families across New York.

B-ROLL of the Governor's visit with children at Vivvi Child Care Center is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the event is available here.

PHOTOS of the event are available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

Thank you, Charlie. Wow. The power of one parent. And I want to thank you for your vision in creating this beautiful space. I had the chance to play with some very energetic two- and three-year-olds, and they're adorable. But also, how you responded to a community that really needed help here and opening in 2019, some would say was kind of a recipe for disaster because the very next year, everything imploded, but you were there. You became the essential workers for the essential workers. And that's how I viewed so many of our child care providers, those who got us through the pandemic, because their parents didn't have the opportunity to say, "I think I'll stay home." They were in New York Presbyterian and other places that you supported right at a time when we needed you the most. So, I want to thank you for what you've done here. This is incredible.

I also want to acknowledge our Acting Commissioner for the Office of Children and Family Services, Suzanne Miles-Gustave. I want to thank her for her work. We're joined by Councilmember Lincoln Restler. Lincoln, great to see you again back in your district. And we'll be hearing from Amanda Hamilton, one of our parents who's going to tell us what it's like.

And this has been fabulous. I'm so great to be able to come here and have a chance to just embrace what you've done. And when we're in Albany, we talk about policies, and we're going to pass a bill and it's going to have money and we're going to do a budget, but then you come out to a place like this, and you see the actualization of ideas that we may have. But here, there's real people whose lives are affected. And so, I'm really, really proud to be here and we know how important child care is. And if we don't focus on making it more affordable and accessible, then our families are going to continue struggling and they're already experiencing an affordability crisis. I mean, maybe inflation's topping out a little bit, but it is still shocking when people have to open up their weekly bills or pay their rent and their mortgage and you know, the cost of everything.

The scariest day is when those bills arrive and you sit at the table and say, "Wow, how is this going to add up?" And as Charlie said, you think about the cost of child care, it is the most expensive item on that bill, that monthly bills - more than people's rent, more than their mortgage payment many times. The average cost is about $15,000 a year per child. You throw in a toddler and a baby together, you know, we're approaching $30,000. Now listen to this, if you're making a minimum wage, which we did just increase, we're going up to $17 an hour and indexing for inflation. So, we understand, but it is cheaper to go to one of the SUNY colleges. And I literally just came down from Albany and spoke with the Chancellor about the cost of education being high. So, getting the kids through kindergarten - college is going to be easy when you think about that. But the sad truth is, is because of these expenses, we are losing a lot of young families, families who really want to be here. We have to work on the cost of housing, which is one of my highest priorities, but we have to find more access to affordable child care.

And I also know a little bit about this personally. I am the first mother to be the Governor of the State. And 35 years ago, I was starting out my career. All I wanted to do was work on Capitol Hill someday. I was a lawyer. I got the dream job working for Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. But I loved my job and all of a sudden, our first child came along. There were no options. There literally were no options for my family. And my husband was just starting out in his career, and we had to decide - you don't give the baby back. We have to make this work. So, I put my career on hold to raise the kids because there were no options 35 years ago. And it pains me to know that all these years later, when that baby is now a parent himself of a delightful one-year-old, that it's still a challenge.

Now it's gotten a lot better, and I thank places like Vivvi for creating options and all the places you've opened. It has made a big difference. But I understand what that's like. And especially the moms who lose that earning power and lose that chance to contributing to Social Security and their long-term pension plans and their benefit plans. We still have over a million women out of work across this country as a result of the pandemic. And I don't want to give anybody a bad flashback, but remember, even if your kids were in school or in child care after the early months, one child tests positive, everybody's going home.

So, where are the kids going? It was just unsustainable. So, last year's Budget as a brand-new Governor, I said, "We have to make up for a lot of lost time here." We put $7 billion toward child care. We brought down out of pocket costs for families. We also focused on expanding eligibility. It used to only be families that earned $55,000 a year could get assistance with child care - $55,000 a year. Now we increased it. We increased. I said, "That's not functional, that doesn't work for families," $83,000 a year, and in October it's going up to $92,000. So, families up to $92,000 will be eligible. That means over half a million more children will be eligible for support for childcare for their parents.

It's still - we have to double down. We have to lift our families up. So, this Empire State Child Care Tax Credit, we have a tax credit for children five and up. I said, "Wait a minute." I actually know because I'm a grandma that the cost of diapers and formula and the fact that that baby is outgrowing everything every few months and now, she's wearing these little shoes. So, why isn't it from infant, newborn to age four covered as well for that family child tax credit? We just changed that in our Budget. That is going to be a huge benefit for families, especially the 600,000 children who're now covered by this as well. So, we are just trying to focus on all the ways we can say, "We're trying to make it a little bit easier on you."

And the other problem is, is we have a lot of people that are eligible, but they're not signing up for the child care subsidies. Well, what's going on there? Well, it turns out, you know, it's probably easier to apply for a mortgage than it is to apply for child care assistance in our state. And I said, "This does not work either."

So, for people who are already eligible and have enrolled in different forms of public assistance, we can say that you're now eligible for child care assistance. If you're already getting home energy assistance or Medicaid or SNAP programs, I'm going to presume you're making under $92,000, you are eligible. Let's just give you a little break and not make you fill out all that paperwork.

But the other key part that Charlie talked about is how we get more employers to buy into this. I have long said that our economy will only achieve its full potential when we have everyone who wants to work in the workforce. That means a lot of women, particularly, but parents who have not been able to work. And I tell employers, you want to jumpstart your business. You want to grow; you want to expand. You want to have the most talented people. You need to help families take care of the child care problem. It's a temporary situation until they hit school. Let's just give them that hand right now.

So, we've decided we're going to make it easier for employers to provide assistance. And I think about companies like Micron. You may have heard of Micron, the largest semiconductor manufacturer in this country. We brought them to New York State. They're going to be opening in Upstate New York. But we also said, as a condition of getting state support, you also need to help with us with child care. In that sense, you're helping yourselves. They just invested over $500,000 into the local YWCA to make sure they had the resources they need up in Syracuse for employees to be able to have child care.

That's what I'm talking about, or calling on others to form a consortium, or downtown business district - figure it out or have child care on site. But what we have right here is one of the greatest examples. Just across the street from Vivvi is Etsy. I've toured Etsy. It's a great place, and their headquarters is here in Dumbo. Many Etsy parents have their children enrolled right here. Think about how easy that is to not have to worry about dropping off somewhere else and backtracking and taking the subway - all the different ways, I don't want to describe it. Right here, you come to work, children across the street, you can drop it and see them, and it works out beautifully.

This is what makes so much more sense. And so, I thank Etsy for stepping up, helping parents shoulder this burden. But we also think that more businesses need to follow their lead. So, we now have an employer sponsored child care pilot program. And we'll have participating employers, the state will help out, the employees will all split the cost of child care, divide that big number into multiple ways we can help you. And we're going to start this off in three parts of the state, and also a business navigator for people to see where there's child care available to them. And a new child tax credit. So, there's different ways that we're supporting families, but also, we have a lot of slots to make up for. People don't realize this, but we lost slots during the pandemic. We lost over 2,000 child care programs overall, 20,000 slots statewide. That's a real problem. And we talked about the child care deserts. This is real. This is not something you read about. This is happening in communities all over our state. So, a lot of caregivers couldn't find child care for their own kids, they couldn't go to work, it got to be a lot of stress for these families.

So, how are we going to attract new people? How are we going to get more people to want to do exactly what Charlie is doing here with Vivvi and all the people are power of this team? How do we get more of this? This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Well, that's why today I'm really proud to announce our $500 million Workforce Retention Grant Program. This is how we're going to bolster New York State's child care workforce. And I want to say the applications for these grants are opening July 15th. So, get ready. We're going to have over 150,000 caregivers across the state will be able to benefit from bonuses. This is a retention bonus, $2,000 to $3,000 to help supplement their income, but also support recruitment and sign on bonuses for new employees. Again, getting people into this incredibly satisfying, incredible field where we're just helping families, helping businesses, so we want to make sure that we get the money out the door. So, help get the word out. Everybody here, please help us because a Budget is a statement of a state's priorities, my priorities as Governor, and what we're doing to help lift up our families, take care of our kids, help our employers get the incredible workforce that they need, and take care of our providers and caregivers.

This is how we're making a down payment on the future. This is how we're showing who we are as a people, keeping our families and kids here, helping employers and helping them grow. So, my goal is to make sure that our young people have the very best start in life. It starts at the place like this and all over the State of New York, and I'm really proud that we are able to enact this with the leaders in the legislature, the assemblymembers, and the senators.

So, I want to thank them, but I also want to talk about this priority in the context of our next speaker, Amanda Hamilton. She's got a great story to tell. She has - she's an executive at Horizon Media and they provide child care benefits to employees as well. But let her tell you what she was able to accomplish. And I'll give you a hint: It involved a diploma and walking down the aisle just a few weeks ago, which she was able to achieve with the support she's able to receive at this wonderful place. So, Amanda, tell us what this means to you. Thank you very much.

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