Good afternoon — It’s Wednesday and Sneaker Day.
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In today’s CapCon:
Here’s what’s happening at the state Capitol on top bills being considered by lawmakers in the final days of this year’s session.
And here are five bills that have already passed both chambers and could have statewide implications in areas like cannabis, drinking water and food sales.
Hochul began to send nominees to the state Senate Tuesday night. That continued Wednesday with an important list for court watchers and MTA riders.
The judicial redistricting bill is out and would add three new judicial districts upstate. Here’s what counties would be in each of them.
Names in today’s CapCon: Joseph R. Biden, Lee Zeldin, Kathy Hochul, Terence O’Leary, John Kagia, Kathleen Moser, Kaitlin Asrow, Christian Jackstadt, Jonathan Rivera
An eye on bills moving through the state Legislature.
The state Senate (Will Waldron/Times Union)
👍 5 bills that have now passed both chambers as lawmakers enter the final days of session
Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly are expected to give first passage to a constitutional amendment to change the state’s redistricting process Wednesday evening.
I broke down the details of what’s in that proposed amendment in Tuesday’s CapCon, which you can read here:
The state Capitol is teeming with lobbyists who’ve lined up in the lobbies of both chambers to influence lawmakers on legislation.
Business groups are making a strong push against a pair of bills being pushed personally by state Attorney General Letitia James that would ban electronic shelf labels and surveillance pricing.
The fate of both bills is undecided but the measure on surveillance pricing has been teed up to pass in the state Assembly, possibly Wednesday evening.
There’s also now a last-minute push from economic development groups against a new omnibus bill to pause and regulate the development of data centers in New York. I detailed that in Tuesday’s CapCon as well.
The Genesee County Economic Development Center, which supports a data center being developed in the town of Alabama, called it “an egregious infringement on our local decision-making rights.”
The bill’s sponsors shot back at its opponents with 63 memos of support Thursday. You can read them all here.
That argument isn’t expected to be persuasive with lawmakers. The omnibus bill cleared the Assembly Rules Committee Wednesday and was set to move through the Senate Rules Committee as well, but the timing there is less clear.
As of Wednesday afternoon around 4 p.m., 444 bills had passed through both chambers since the start of this year’s session. Lawmakers will have to pass about 350 more between now and the end of day Friday to match what they’ve done in the past two years.
Many of those will be local bills, like measures to extend authorization for a county to impose a hotel tax. But several others could have statewide implications.
Here are five bills that have passed both chambers this week that fall into the latter category and could have a significant impact. Some have previously been vetoed by Gov. Kathy Hochul.
(Milan_Jovic/Getty Images)
1. Banning AI chatbots in children’s toys (S9408/A11144)
While this isn’t yet widespread, some toy companies have already started selling products that use AI chatbots connected to the internet to speak with children.
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