Thursday, June 6, was the last scheduled day of New York’s 2024 legislative session, but we went into overtime. The Senate completed their business on Friday, June 7 around 8:30 p.m. while the Assembly worked through the night and completed their work just after 7:00 a.m. Saturday, June 8.
The legislative session in Albany is normally measured in two phases: budget time, which runs until sometime around the April 1 budget deadline, and post-budget, which runs from then until the end of the session. Traditionally, the post-budget phase lasts about eight weeks. However, this year’s post-budget phase was truncated because of a late State budget and a late observance of the Passover holiday, which significantly impacted how the session concluded. The normal eight-week end of session period was only five weeks, making it difficult to garner momentum for the large-scale legislative priorities that we tend to see at the end of a legislative session.
As you may recall from the newsletter earlier this year, we were very closely monitoring the state budget process as it contained numerous legislative priorities for ANA-NY. One such budget priority was the extension of the Nurse Practitioner Modernization Act, which was set to sunset on April 1, 2024. Once it became clear that the budget was going to be delayed, standalone legislation as introduced and passed to extend the Nurse Practitioner Modernization Act to April 1, 2026. We will continue to work with the Nurse Practitioners to support their push to make the Act permanent.
The final budget also contained language that strengthens the enforcement authority of the Office of Cannabis Management to expedite the closure of unlicensed businesses selling cannabis illegally. As we have mentioned in the past, ANA-NY is part of Tobacco Free New York, a coalition advocacy group dedicated to fighting against tobacco use in the state. The coalition strongly supported this proposal, as well as standalone legislation that would expand enforcement actions against entities selling illegal flavored vapor products. Although this standalone legislation did not pass this year, it will continue to be a priority in 2025.
A few other budget priorities that had been included in the Governor’s budget proposal also did not make the final budget. One such proposal was to add New York to the Interstate Nurse Licensure Compact, which ANA-NY strongly supported. While the Nurse Licensure Compact was not included in the final budget, we are still working on this issue as standalone legislation.
Once the budget was concluded, we pivoted immediately to the last few weeks of the 2024 legislative session. We successfully achieved majority-sponsorship in both houses for legislation that would require hospitals to have a registered professional nurse as a sitting and voting member of the governing entity responsible for developing a hospital’s strategic plan, structure, systems, policies and programs. The bill, S9187, sponsored by Senator Lea Webb, and A10320, sponsored by Assemblymember Karines Reyes, will be one of our main legislative priorities in the next legislative session, and we are working now to build a coalition of support for the legislation by reaching out to other nursing organizations.
Another bill we supported was through the Let’s Get Immunized Coalition and would create a statewide registry for adult immunizations with an opt out provision. Currently, there is an adult registry, but adults must opt in to have their information included meaning that many patient health records are lacking vital information. This bill advanced in the Assembly but did not move out of committee in the Senate.
A bill that we strongly opposed did not advance out of committee this year. The “Health Care Professional Transparency Act” would heavily restrict the ability of non-medical professionals to advertise and discuss their credentials and would ban private credentialing and certification outside of the medical profession and is a blatant attempt to undermine public confidence in the qualification and expertise of tens of thousands of non-physician health providers, who are called upon to provide the delivery of and access to health care for millions of New Yorkers. This misguided attempt by proponents of the legislation to diminish the services provided by vital health care professionals was strongly opposed by a coalition of over twenty-two health care provider groups in New York who are working to serve the needs of New York’s patient population during a time of severe shortages of healthcare providers.
Our legislative work this session was bolstered by the support of the members who participated in our 2024 ANA-NY Lobby Day efforts. Held on May 7 to align with National Nurses Week, we held a joint lobby day with our affiliate member, the New York State Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Between the two groups, we had over seventy in person participants that met with dozens of legislators and staff and had several hundred virtual contacts through our Voter Voice platform. Thank you to all who participated in our 2024 Lobby Day!
With session having concluded for now, everyone’s focus will turn to the upcoming elections. Primary elections will occur across the State on Tuesday, June 25. For the General election on Tuesday, November 5, all 213 seats of the Legislature will be on the ballot as are all members of the U.S. House of Representatives, the United States Senate seat currently occupied by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who is running for reelection, as well as the seat for President of the United States. There are also many local races that will be on the ballot. We already know that there are many members of the Legislature who are retiring or seeking another office, so there will be many new members in the next legislative session. In addition, many of those leaving are chairs of key committees, so we will see many new committee chairs next year, especially in the Assembly.
Additionally, the Legislative Committee will be reviewing the legislative agenda for 2025 – 2026 and preparing to present this to the membership for review and vote at the annual meeting in October. As always, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please share them with the Committee.
Finally, we would like to remind you that ANA-NY now has a Political Action Committee (PAC). The ANA-NY PAC will be supporting candidates that support the profession and issues of importance to our members. We urge you to visit the ANA-NY PAC web site and donate.
If you have any questions about the legislative process or the priorities of ANA-NY, please contact a member of the Legislative Committee. As always, we welcome your questions, thoughts, ideas or comments on legislation or the bill track.
