She’s big on the bills — and not just her beloved Buffalo Bills.
Gov. Kathy Hochul embarked on a flurry of end-of-year bill signings and vetoes — with charitable organizations and creepy-crawly horseshoe crabs emerging as some of the wacky winners.
With the legislative spree largely done by Monday, the governor ultimately acted on a whopping 853 pieces of legislation in 2025.
“We had a lot of tough bills to consider. We got to the right place,” Hochul said in Albany, while signing a partial ban on the drug kratom.
“Maybe next year there will be less than 850, but who knows.”
Hochul in recent days also approved A-list legislation focused on AI and prison reform during what experts called a fairly “routine year” in Albany — aside from her troublesome growing habit of demanding post-passage tweaks to the bills.
Here’s some of the notable legislation Hochul took on, from the big-time to the somewhat ridiculous surprises:
AI
An artificial intelligence safety bill — the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Safety and Education Act, or RAISE Act — got Hochul’s OK after months of haggling with state lawmakers.
The Legislature had passed the bill setting guardrails on advanced AI models in June, drawing an outcry from Big Tech companies such as Google and OpenAI.
The tech giants argued that the bill should be closer to a similar measure passed in California — a goal Hochul said on Monday the refined language had achieved.
Hochul contended signing the bill was important because Congress and President Trump had effectively abdicated any responsibility in regulating AI.
“It’s up to the states to lead,” she said.”We’re not trying to stifle development. We’re here to make sure there are safeguards in place.”
The tweaked legislation requires developers to create AI frameworks with standardized criteria and to report “critical safety incidents” to New York within 72 hours.
Those tweaks were made through so-called “chapter amendments,” a secretive process in which lawmakers effectively re-pass a bill with changes requested by the governor.
John Kaehny, executive director of good government group Reinvent Albany, said the process reeks of undemocratic “three people in a room” governance — and that Hochul has increasingly used it instead of outright vetoing bills.
“She’s rewriting bills. Legislators are not defending their turf. They’re ceding their turf,” Kaehny said.
Prison reform and MTA tickets
Hochul also tweaked — and signed — a high-profile prison reform bill after shocking fatal beatings of inmates by corrections officers.
The law will require video footage of inmates’ deaths to be released, triples the size of the state’s Commission on Correction and calls on prisons to install cameras in infirmaries.
The murder of Robert Brooks — who was beat to death by an upstate corrections officer while in an infirmary during a caught-on-video attack — made the reforms necessary, Hochul said.
Brooks was “tortured by people who were supposed to protect him,” she said.
Another bill that got changed to Hochul’s liking with a chapter amendment was a measure exempting MTA workers from bus lane tickets, so long as they were working on the transit agency’s vehicles.
“Garnering tickets while performing authorized duties is patently unfair, however the original bill had technical errors that would not grant relief to MTA employees receiving tickets while working in bus lanes,” Hochul wrote in memo about the chapter amendment.
Lawmakers ultimately agreed to tweaks that prompted Hochul to sign the bill.
Odds and ends
The humble horseshoe crab got extra protection to help ensure its 440 million years of existence don’t end soon.
Hochul signed the Horseshoe Crab Protection Act, which ultimately bans the older-than-the-dinosaurs critters from being commercially fished or taken for biomedical purposes after vetoing a similar measure last year.
The sea creatures’ literal blue blood contains antibacterial properties prized by the medical industry.
“Horseshoe crabs are a vital keystone species to New York, often called living fossils, and are important to our environments,” she wrote.
Hochul wrote she signed this year’s horseshoe crab-saving bill because lawmakers agreed to make changes allowing for alternatives that don’t deplete the Empire State’s population of shoreline-scurrying living fossils.
“Last year, I vetoed similar legislation due to concerns that this bill could have unintended consequences on the commercial fishing industry and biomedical advancements. The effective date of the bill did not leave those industries enough time to transition to alternatives,” Hochul said.
Charitable organizations, including volunteer firefighters and veterans’ nonprofit groups, can also continue to use “electric bell jar” machines for fundraising under another bill approved by the governor.
Hochul also signed a repeal of a rule requiring gas companies to hook up new buildings within 100 feet of an existing gas line free of cost. And she signed a measure requiring warning labels on social media.
Hochul ultimately signed 712 pieces of legislation, vetoed 141 and left three on her desk –including a bill allowing doctor-assisted suicide, which she has promised to sign next year — as of Monday.
The tally is higher than the 804 bills she handled in 2024, and largely on par with previous years’ aside from during the COVID pandemic.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for comparison, signed 794 bills into law and vetoed 123 during his state’s legislative session.
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