Sen. Jose Serrano

Establishes the Early Learning Child Care Act to impose a payroll tax on certain employers for the purposes of addressing child care affordability, accessibility, and quality for families with children under five years of age; establishes the early learning child care fund; establishes the early learning child care program to provide subsidies to covered children to attend early learning child care programs; establishes the New York state child care board.

Establishes the crime of disruption of an online public meeting when a person with intent to cause public inconvenience, annoyance or alarm, without lawful authority, and acting through a computer service, such person disturbs any lawful assembly or meeting of persons open to the public conducted through a computer service; makes such crime a class B misdemeanor.

Relates to returnable bottles; adds noncarbonated soft drinks, certain noncarbonated fruit or vegetable juices, coffee and tea beverages, carbonated fruit beverages and cider to the definition of "beverage"; provides that beginning April 1, 2027, the handling fee will be six cents for each beverage container accepted by a deposit initiator from a dealer or operator of a redemption center; directs the multi-agency bottle bill fraud investigation team to submit a report on findings of pervasive bottle redemption fraud in New York state.

Relates to the development and posting of a senior trail guide that identifies walking and hiking opportunities for active seniors within the state park system and along public non-motorized multi-use trails within the state.

Provides additional compensation to certain city employees who possess or make substantial use of foreign languages in the performance of official duties; further creates the "language services program" and a language services director to implement the program.

Establishes a civil cause of action for employees who are subjected to an abusive work environment; provides employers shall be vicariously liable for such work environment.

Establishes the healthy and safe students act; requires comprehensive sexuality instruction for students in grades K-12 which includes a model curricula for comprehensive sexuality education and at a minimum conforms to the content and scope of national sexuality education standards.

Provides notice of the death of an incarcerated individual occurring in the custody of the department of corrections and community supervision; requires the department to promptly notify the next kin and any other person designated as the representative of any incarcerated individual whose death takes place during custody.

Renames the New York state musical instrument revolving fund as the New York state music grant fund; broadens the use of such funds to be available as grants to not-for-profit symphony orchestras and/or other not-for-profit musical entities incorporated in the state and organized for the purpose of the presentation of performing arts and education in the performing arts for the benefit of the public and which have been approved pursuant to guidelines established by the council.

Maddy summaryS 1439 (New York) imposes a new tax on investment income from long-term capital gains, dividends, and other low-taxed federal income types. It directly affects high-income New York residents with significant investment earnings, targeting individuals and estates with taxable income above specific thresholds. The bill adds a 7.5% tax on long-term capital gains above $400,000-$500,000 (depending on filing status), gradually increasing to 15% above $800,000-$1 million. This tax phases in over defined income ranges and is administered like existing state income tax. The bill is currently referred to the Budget and Revenue committee.