30 Issues in 30 Days: Childcare in New York

Brian Lehrer (0:10)

Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, episode 4 of 30 Issues in 30 Days, our election series. So far, we've been talking about national issues, voting, redistricting, Medicare for All in segments 1 through 3 Now, we're going to turn to our other main focus for the series, the New York State Governor's Race between incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul and her Republican challenger, the Nassau County Executive, Bruce Blakeman. So it's 30 Issues in 30 Days, issue number 4, affordable child care as an issue in the New York State Governor's Race.

Brigid Bergin joins us for this, our senior political reporter at WNYC and Gothamist, and she's the host, as some of you heard yesterday, WNYC's newest show called Who's Running This Place, which premiered yesterday with an interview with Governor Hochul, which included this issue, a play clips of both Hochul and Blakeman on it. We're also joined by Shoshana Hershkowitz. She is the campaign manager at the Empire State Campaign for Child Care, that as its name implies, is an advocacy group fighting for universal child care across the state. Brigid, hi, and Shoshana, welcome to WNYC.

Shoshana Hershkowitz (1:22)

Thank you.

Brigid Bergin (1:22)

Hey, Brian.

Brian Lehrer (1:24)

Brigid, let's start with a clip from your Hochul interview yesterday. This begins with you citing a voter who you talked to about the issue.

Brigid Bergin (1:34)

We spoke to a mom at a playground in Crown Heights about her own child care struggles. This is Ami Austin.

Shoshana Hershkowitz (1:41)

I haven't been able to even go back to work, so that's expensive.

Ami Austin (1:45)

I know people who are paying $1,000 a week for child care.

Shoshana Hershkowitz (1:48)

I can afford $1,000 a week for child care.

Brigid Bergin (1:51)

So I don't...

Annie (1:52)

that alone makes it impossible.

Brigid Bergin (1:56)

What kind of hope would you offer to a mom like that?

Kathy Hochul (1:59)

Well, that was my story as well.

And for her to know that there's a governor who understands that deeply personally, that I want to continue fighting to make sure we have fully universal child care. And what we have to do is build the infrastructure. We can't say that we are open for business for everyone without having the locations, making sure that they're properly vetted and have all the resource we want them to have. We have to have the support team, the workers, the teachers, the child care providers. And so that's what we're doing. I've been investing over $12 billion on child care, far more than any other governor in this position for the last five years. And now we're on the cusp of not just helping with affordability. We have a program where people making up to about $130,000, they can pay only $15 a week for child care. That's my goal. But we just have to have more capacity.

Brian Lehrer (2:58)

Governor Hochul with Brigid Bergin this week, as aired yesterday on Who's Running This Place, Brigid's new Thursday 1 p.m. interview and call-in show that's going to run through the election. So, Brigid, from that clip, we certainly get the sense that Hochul sees herself and wants voters to see her as the candidate for child care.

But what is her record so far? And we're going to ask Shoshana too as an advocate on this issue. But for you as a reporter, what is her record so far and what is a candidate is she actually opposing for next term?

Brigid Bergin (3:31)

Sure. So one of the things that many of us are familiar with, if you hear the governor talk about how she approaches policies, she talks about herself as the first mom governor, the first grandmother governor. And the way that conversation started was I did ask her, how does that inform her policy?

And we know that even before, for a lot of New York City voters, Mayor Zoran Mamdani made Universal Child Care a central part of his mayoral platform. Governor Hochul had been talking about expanding child care in this state. And one of the things that we saw at the beginning of this year was that really somewhat remarkable moment of two of them standing together, locking arms, talking about this expansion of early childhood care here in the city, the launch of TwoCare. But from a statewide perspective, what that also meant was expanding Pre-K and some 3K for other parts of the state. So I think part of what we've seen here is more of a focus on child care from Hochul's office. And she does have a plan to reach expanding child care, but it's imperfect, and as I'm sure Shoshana can weigh in, even when you talk about some of these voucher programs, there can be very long wait lists. So when she talked about making sure that people have access to child care for just $15, that's not something that is easily accessible to the number of people who need it.