June 14, 2024
Attached is a sector-by-sector summary of the bills passed by both the Senate and Assembly in the Health and Mental Hygiene areas during the recently concluded 2024 Legislative Session. Many thanks are (again) due to Marcy Savage and our colleagues at Reid, McNally and Savage for their unrelenting work on our priority issues.
We have noted below the legislation that has already been acted on by Governor Hochul while most have yet to be transmitted to her desk for consideration but must be by the end of the calendar year. The bill text for any bill can be viewed at: https://nyassembly.gov/leg/.
June 14, 2024
2024 Health/Mental Hygiene End of Session Bill Summary
The regularly scheduled 2024 legislative session in New York concluded over the weekend with the Senate adjourning Friday, June 7th late in the evening while the Assembly worked through the morning, gaveling out at 7am on June 8th. In total, over 800 individual bills were passed by both houses during the 2024 legislative session out of approximately 17,000 bills introduced since the session started in January. Passed bills will now need to be transmitted to Governor Hochul’s desk before the end of the year for her to sign, veto or seek chapter amendments for.
While many issues dominated state discussions this year including housing, cannabis reform, retail theft, internet child safety, and climate change, the Governor’s last-minute decision to halt the MTA’s congestion pricing program for Manhattan, scheduled to go into effect on June 30th, threw the Legislature into chaos in the final days of the session. Governor Hochul suggested increasing the payroll mobility tax to make up for the $1 billion shortfall this year due to the suspension, but this was rejected by the legislature. There was also talk of committing money from the state’s general or rainy-day funds to make up for the $1 billion in lost revenue. Ultimately, no agreement was reached. The Governor will have to call the Legislature back for a special session if there is a deal to approve.
Lawmakers have now returned to their districts with many facing primary challenges on June 25th and the general elections November 5th this year. Absent a call for a “special session” legislators won’t return to Albany again until January 2025 when the next session begins.
While the Legislature did not pass a bill that would have reduced the prevalence of plastic packaging, the Medical Aid in Dying Act, or the OMIG Reform bill, they did pass a number of high-profile measures including:
- A “Climate Change Superfund Act” bill that create a system to require fossil fuel companies to pay for the purported climate damage to the environment via assessments;
- A bill to require gun manufacturers to take reasonable steps to design their products in a way that ensures that they are not compatible with machine gun conversion devices;
- The “SAFE for Kids Act” bill that would require parental consent for children to access algorithm-driven social media feeds and the “New York Child Data Protection Act” to prevent the collection and exploitation of children’s data;
- A bill to reform the state’s “wrongful death” law, to expand on damages that can be sought for “loss of nurture, guidance, counsel, advice, training, companionship, and education” in addition to potential lost support and/or diminishment of inheritance, modified from a bill vetoed by the Governor in 2023 (described further below);
- A bill to expedite the roll out of casino licenses in and around New York City.