Spectrum News: N.Y. pols to spar over affordability, insurance reforms as they return to Albany

By: Kate Lisa

With Wednesday's start of the 2026 legislative session, "affordability" is the word political leaders and activists expect will be bouncing off the halls of the state Capitol for the second year running.

Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders are preparing for their annual fiscal spar over the state budget due April 1, and how to ease the burden on New Yorkers struggling to keep up with the state's high cost of living.

"For us, affordability is going to be the No. 1 issue," Paul Zuber, executive vice president of the Business Council of New York State, told Spectrum News 1.

Everything is too expensive from child care, health care to insurance, and New Yorkers want relief. 

The Business Council backs a proposal to legalize licenses for grocery stores to sell wine. The proposal is popular across the aisle, as a recent Siena University poll showed more than 75% of New Yorkers back wine in supermarkets. New York is one of just 10 U.S. states that don't permit it.

Zuber said the change is needed more than ever with less funding from Washington, including new costs to the state for food stamps.

"We believe that there's revenue out there in regards to wine in grocery stores that can be utilized to help offset some of those costs on consumers, some of those costs that the state's going to feel with the SNAP program," said Zuber, who discussed the idea with state Division of Budget officials on Dec. 22.

Liquor stores have pushed back on the legislation for more than 15 years, but it's possible that Gov. Hochul will include the proposal in her State of the State address to be held in Albany on Tuesday.

Elected officials are feeling the pressure to get a lot done over the next five months with every seat in the Legislature up for election in November, but it depends on how Hochul's executive budget will set the stage after its release later this month.

Assemblyman Brian Cunningham, a Brooklyn Democrat, has been in close talks with the governor's team about what should be included in next week's State of the State, including housing and getting the state on a path to universal child care. Cunningham is a potential pick to be Hochul’s running mate.

The assemblyman's top affordability priority is changing state law to calculate an area's median income by ZIP code, so aid will reach communities most in need.

"If you look at something like Central Brooklyn where gentrification so rapidly happened in my district, you have folks who are longtime residents like myself who've lived there my entire life, and you have new folks who are coming in that are making a lot more income," Cunningham explained. "We've got to figure out how to balance that to make sure that people like myself, young families, folks returning from school and senior citizens don't get priced out while we accommodate our new neighbors."

It remains unclear if lawmakers will curb, or try to offset, higher expenses from the state's strict clean energy mandates.

Zuber argues that lawmakers must avoid climate proposals that would increase costs for businesses. A continuing push for a measure that would reduce plastic packaging and waste across the state, he said, would translate to higher costs for consumers elsewhere.

"We all want a greener environment," Zuber said. "But with that bill, we have to understand that those changes are going to impact companies and the cost that companies have with manufacturing, with how they package certain things, with certain products that will even be able to be on the shelves. And who's going to bear the brunt of those additional changes? It's likely to be the consumers."

And Hochul is expected to address the rising cost of car insurance in her budget proposal as incidents of motor vehicle insurance fraud have more than doubled over the last decade. Insurers reported 44,361 cases of suspected car insurance fraud to the state Department of Financial Services Insurance Fraud Bureau in 2024 — up from 19,912 in 2014.

"We need to tackle fraud," Lawsuit Reform Alliance Executive Director Tom Stebbins said. "Fraud has been increasing in auto, it has been increasing in construction, and it is now costing all of us. And we're all essentially spending more on taxes, spending more on insurance, spending more on medical care."

But leaders with the New York Trial Lawyers Association said crashes aren’t driving higher premiums, which won’t be solved by blaming victims. Instead, the association will push for reform to prevent insurers from delaying, or wrongfully denying, a claim.