Author: Zachary Groz | New York Focus
This story originally appeared in New York Focusa nonprofit news publication examining power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here.
For the first time since taking office in 2021, Gov. Kathy Hochul won’t be taking a pile of unsigned bills with her for the Christmas holidays. This year, she has either signed or vetoed all but two of the 856 bills that have passed the state legislature. (One is the controversial medical aid-in-dying bill she promised to sign; the other would add two judicial districts in Western New York and is still in the air.)
She moved quickly in part by vetoing more bills than usual: 140, or more than 16 percent of those passed by the Senate and Assembly. Last yearvetoed less and negotiated through more. The only year Hochul issued more vetoes was 2022, when lawmakers passed a whopping 1,010 bills — the most in at least three decades — and the governor overturned 166 of them.
This year’s vetoes range from the predictable (like the Grieving Families Act, struck down for the fourth time in a row) to the confusing, like the bill to protect the Corporate Transparency Act that Hochul championed in 2023. As Chris Bragg writes below, the law is now poised to be crippled by new federal rules just as it was supposed to take effect.
Hochul also vetoed other transparency bills this year, including two aimed at strengthening New York’s Freedom of Information Act. As Chris Gelardi recently wrote, “the new era of transparency” she he promised when taking office is still waiting.
Good government groups bristled at those decisions, but others celebrated, including her veto of a bill that would have required at least two people to drive each subway car and other it would cut off parts of Co-op City in the Bronx from bus lane enforcement cameras.
She also vetoed a slew of bills this year that would have expanded retirement or disability benefits for various state and local employees. (She has, however, signed 20-odd other bills that extend benefits to specific public employees, such as a corrections officer in Monroe County and a police officer in Port Chester.) And for the second time, she rejected a push to speed up payments to nonprofits that the state relies on to provide countless social services.
As usual, Hochul blamed many of the vetoes — about half — on a lack of cash, arguing that the bills would require spending that the state budget did not anticipate. That included one that would create an independent office to represent utility customers in rate hike proceedings.
In all, Hochul has vetoed or negotiated amendments to 228 bills this year, or 27 percent, again using her signature powers more aggressively than any of her recent predecessors.
Don’t count on lawmakers to override any of the vetoes — even for the 60 bills that passed unanimously. The maneuver is unheard of in Albany, where lawmakers are preparing to square off with the governor. budget negotiations where he keeps the cards.
Here are a few highlights from the many bills Hochul vetoed in 2025. You can also browse the full list for yourself — including the governor’s “veto notes” that justify each one — in our database below.
—Colin Kinniburgh
180 on company transparency
Two years ago, Hochul signed a law requiring it limited liability companies in New York to share more information about their true owners. The goal of the law was to make it harder for white-collar workers to hide behind shell companies; Hochul said it will curb “wage theft, money laundering, mistreatment of tenants and other illegal activity.”
The law is set to go into effect on Jan. 1 — but Hochul has just issued a veto that is likely to dramatically limit its scope.
In March, the Trump administration issued rules that undermine similar federal legislation by making the disclosure requirement apply only to foreign LLCs. The 2023 state law relied on language linked to the federal law. So in June, the Legislature passed a bill updating the definitions in state law to ensure it applies as intended to both foreign and domestic companies.
Business interests have long lobbied against the disclosure requirement, arguing it would burden small businesses with paperwork and fines. In her veto report, Hochul wrote that the newer state law would create a mandate for New York businesses “not required by federal law” and that imposing “additional requirements on LLCs” was not in the state’s best interest. As a result, New York law will likely only apply to foreign LLCs.
“The LLC Transparency Act is the most important anti-corruption law enacted during Hochula’s first term,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the government reform group Reinvent Albany. “She basically just gutted it with that veto and sided with the Trump administration’s repeal of the federal law.”—Chris Bragg
Freedom to withhold information
LLCs aren’t the only entities Hochul has shielded from transparency this year. The governor vetoed two bills that sought to strengthen the state’s Freedom of Information Act, which allows members of the public to request records from government agencies.
The first bill would impose new deadlines for meeting public records requests and force agencies to justify any delays to a state agency — an attempt to set current FOIL deadlines that agencies can extend indefinitely. (New York Focus reporters have pending requests older than three years.) In his veto report, Hochul called the deadlines “arbitrary,” without acknowledging that the bill offers ways to extend them. She also expressed concern about the lack of funding, which she largely controls through the governor-led state budget process.
The second bill was intended as a corrective to recent controversial court decisions. This year, a state appeals court issued four summary decisions that held that, with limited exceptions, agencies can withhold entire documents if any of them are undisclosed through FOIL, rather than simply redacting the undisclosed portions. Lawmakers condemned the decision as wrong, as well Committee on Open Governmenta body within the Hochul Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Hochul vetoed it, calling the legislation “duplicative of current law.” Her veto report made no mention of appeal decisions.
The deadline bill passed both the Senate and the House unanimously, with all but two lawmakers voting in favor of the amendment. The sentence further cemented the governor as a patron of secrecy in the eyes of reform organizations. For the third year in a row, the New York Coalition for Open Government posted by Hochul on the receiving end of coal on its annual “naughty or nice” list, while Reinvent Albany lambasted governor for repeatedly stalling reforms to New York’s public records system, one of them the slowest in the country.
— Chris Gelardi
Utility Consumer Advocate
For the fifth year in a row, lawmakers passed a bill in June to give New Yorkers a bigger voice in the country byzantine process which controls their energy bills. And for the fifth time Hochul refused.
In 2022, 23 and 24, legislators sought this enable watchdog groups recover part of their expenses from participation in public administration proceedings. Hochula’s three sentences of the law, she clearly expressed her position on this.
Lawyers this year revived a different approach they tried last time in 2021: a bill aimed at creating the office of “Utility Consumer Advocate.” They hoped so, amid growing concern energy availabilitythe governor might be more receptive this year.
She wasn’t. Hochul settled the bill along with a number of others creating commissions and task forces, which she said would cost the state about $30 million in total that it didn’t have in the budget. She did not specifically comment on public services legislation. In the past, she claimed that the state already has authorities that advocate for consumers. But as I reported, those offices are make it smaller than those in many other states, and which even New York itself once possessed.
Bill Ferris, legislative representative for AARP New York, said it’s hard to understand why Hochul opposed the legislation. “The only thing we can come up with is that he’s listening to the utilities that don’t want to change the game,” he said.
In a new analysis released after Hochula’s veto, AARP found that the state’s nine largest utilities combined spent more than 31 million dollars in customer funds for own legal and professional representation in the recent proceedings to increase installments.
Hochul also vetoed threeother pieces of legislation related to public services this year, two of which – require companies to tell customers more about themrate hikes andconstruction work — passed almost unanimously.
—Colin Kinniburgh
Subscription fees for car features
What if you had to pay a monthly fee to turn on the car seat heater in the winter? Or run it remotely?
Charging car owners for built-in features, even after they buy the car, is a fast-growing sector of the auto industry. By the end of the GM decade he hopes he will up to $25 billion a year in subscriptions – AKA charges buyers for features they expect to be free once they buy the car.
A bill by Sen. James Skoufis and Assemblyman William Magnarelli would ban the practice and make it impossible for automakers to require subscriptions for any features that come with their cars and don’t cost the manufacturer additional money to operate once purchased. It would allow the company to charge for features that rely on internet or cellular connections.
The bill overwhelmingly passed both houses of the legislature, with only two votes against. In her veto message, Hochul said that while she supports “strong consumer protections,” the law “restricts consumer choices and may increase the cost of new vehicles.”
– Sam Mellins
Two-man train crews
Public transit boosters showered Hochul with praise for overturning a law that would have required every subway train to have both an operator and a conductor. Her veto report claimed that the trains could be safely driven by the operator himself, such as the vast majority there are already large subways and suburban trains in similar cities.
Most New York subways currently have two crew members, so this veto won’t change the status quo much. But it leaves the way open for changes in the future or for new lines, like the planned Interborough Express in Brooklyn and Queens, to have one driver or even run automatically. Switching to one-man crews could save the subway system hundreds of millions of dollars a yearaccording to the Citizens Budget Commission, a watchdog group.
In recent weeks, planners and transit advocates pushed for Hochul to veto the bill, while John Samuelsen, president of the Transportation Workers Union, aggressively lobbied for her to sign it, arguing that two-man crews are necessary for passenger safety. He intervened after the sentence and framed the problem in a populist way.
“Neither the gentrifiers, nor the politicians, nor the cocky academics will defeat the transport workers union,” he said.he tweeted. “Cry over your kale chips and ridiculous mockups, but you’re not going.” [to] remove our conductors.”
– Sam Mellins
Non-profit contracts
Non-profit organizations form the backbone of New York’s safety netproviding critical services from emergency housing to addiction treatment. But the state was not a reliable customer.
Government payments that are routinely late have forced many organizations to operate on thin margins, draw costly lines of credit, downsize or close altogether. One recent survey suggests that the state could collectively owe more than $650 million to nonprofits for services already provided. Continued cuts in funding at the federal level have only increased the pressure on nonprofits serve more New Yorkers while receiving less support.
Hochul vetoed the bill this would provide some relief by streamlining the contracting process, requiring the state to make certain partial payments in advance, and paying interest to nonprofits in cases of delayed funding. Her veto memo cited a potential increase in “the risk of fraud and misuse of state funds.”
— Jie Jenny Zou
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