Hochul to target food insecurity in State of the State

Heading into her first reelection, Gov. Kathy Hochul is planning to lean into what has so far been a winning message: let’s help the kids. As part of plans to safeguard against food insecurity in anticipation of federal cuts, she plans to ensure that every child in New York can get free school meals, even over the summer. 

In last year’s State of the State address, Hochul announced her support for universal free school meals, and the measure was later included in the budget.. It enabled every school in the state to serve breakfast and lunch to students without means testing. After federal assistance that had expanded free meals during the pandemic ran out, Hochul’s funding of the permanent expansion won her significant praise. 

Now, Hochul plans to address how to close “the summer gap” as part of her State of the State on Tuesday. Like meals during the school year, federal pandemic assistance that supported expanded summer meals has run out. So Hochul will work with local communities to figure out ways for them to continue their summer meals programs and provide state assistance where needed. 

In addition to free school meals, Hochul has also made child online safety and mental health a top priority. She championed the SAFE for Kids Act that enacted new social media regulations for minors, and she’s looking to pass additional measures this year too. Hochul also succeeded in getting a school cellphone ban passed as part of last year’s budget, another child-centric achievement that has gotten her high marks among voters in the state.

Even more significantly, Hochul has become dedicated to achieving universal child care, a goal she shares with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. She unveiled her plan to get the ball rolling last week, starting with enacting truly universal pre-K statewide and child care for 2-year-olds in New York City. The prospect is a popular one that will undoubtedly play well with voters – as it did for Mamdani – but questions still remain around how the state will fund it.

The summer meals are part of one of Hochul’s broader themes for her State of the State agenda: “helping New Yorkers put food on the table.” Other tenets include expanded state funding of food banks and soup kitchens, creating a new grant program dubbed New York PLATES to assist food pantries with capital needs and rolling out new EBT cards with secure microchips to prevent food benefits theft through card skimming.

The commitments also continue Hochul’s trend of putting herself in contrast to President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. “When the Trump Administration was determined to rip food access away from three million New Yorkers, I committed $106 million toward emergency food assistance programs and reinforcing New York's network of food banks and food pantries, and I'm not stopping there,” she said in a statement, referring to the state funding she announced in October after the federal government cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits. “While Washington Republicans turn their backs on hardworking Americans, here in New York we are making investments and establishing protections to ensure that no New Yorker goes hungry.” 

In addition to her own reelection, Hochul will spend the next 11 months working both to defend vulnerable Democratic members of the House and flip seats held by Republicans in swing districts, so New Yorkers should get used to hearing that narrative.

Helping fund access to meals fits into Hochul’s general affordability agenda as well, which state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins reiterated her support for on Monday. “It is, essentially, what everyone in New York is asking us to pay attention to,” she told reporters. Stewart-Cousins touched on several other issues where she expects the state Senate and the governor will act in lockstep. “I've always appreciated the fact that I have partners in government that are pretty much rolling in the same direction,” she said. In their opening remarks last week, both Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie expressed their commitment to affordability, as well as the importance of standing up to the federal administration.