Anna Kelles

Education

Universal childcare means affordable, high-quality care from infancy through school age, including after-school care and school breaks, so parents can maintain steady employment year-round. When care is stable, families are better able to stay housed, keep children engaged in school, and access preventive health care, which strengthens communities and reduces avoidable strain across public systems. Learn more

Childcare will not expand if the people doing the work cannot afford to stay in the profession, and low pay is a primary driver of staffing shortages that keep programs from opening classrooms and filling seats. Parents cannot absorb tuition increases large enough to fix this, and providers cannot cut costs without cutting quality, so improving wages requires stable, ongoing public funding rather than one-time bonuses. Learn more

Reimbursement rates that fail to cover the real cost of care force providers to cap enrollment, reduce hours, or close altogether, even when demand is high. Predictable, adequate rates are essential to maintaining existing programs and expanding supply, particularly in upstate and rural communities where options are already limited. Learn more

Environment / Energy

New York’s clean energy transition is already underway, but too often the costs are showing up in higher electric bills for households and small businesses. A durable transition requires a reliable revenue mechanism that places responsibility on the largest polluters, funding emissions reductions, grid upgrades, and efficiency investments without shifting costs onto everyday New Yorkers. An economy-wide cap-and-invest program is one such mechanism, and moving forward with clear draft regulations is necessary to launch this program in a way that delivers emissions reductions, clean energy jobs, and electric bill relief for New Yorkers. Learn more

New York State is set to run out of landfill space within the next 16-25 years. Current building practices generate enormous amounts of waste and accelerate the loss of landfill capacity by discarding materials that still have economic value. Shifting toward deconstruction and reuse reduces waste, lowers disposal costs, supports local reuse and materials markets, and creates skilled jobs tied to recovery and repair rather than extraction. Learn more

Healthcare

Prescription drug prices continue to rise faster than wages, forcing people to ration medication or skip treatment altogether. Temporary fixes may offer short-term relief, but lasting affordability requires changing the systems that allow drug prices to keep rising in the first place. Learn more

Across upstate New York, long wait times are driven less by demand than by the inability of healthcare providers to afford to live and practice in the communities that need them. Workforce policy has to address housing, loan burdens, and compensation together if access is going to improve, particularly in rural areas. Learn more

A system that ties healthcare to employment leaves people exposed when jobs change, hours are cut, or illness strikes, and recent federal cuts to Medicaid eligibility are already pushing many New Yorkers out of coverage altogether. That loss of coverage does not just harm families, it increases medical debt, destabilizes the workforce, and shifts costs onto employers and the state. The New York Health Act offers a pragmatic way to stabilize both healthcare access and the economy by guaranteeing coverage, reducing administrative waste, and giving workers and employers predictability. Learn more

Housing

New York’s housing policies have too often pushed development into greenfields and farmland, even though building there raises public costs and makes housing more expensive over time. Directing affordable housing investment toward existing communities, where roads, utilities, and services already exist, lowers the cost of building housing, limits sprawl into agricultural and environmentally sensitive land, and better aligns state spending with housing and climate goals. Learn more

Housing vouchers do not prevent homelessness if families cannot find landlords willing to accept them. Expanding HAVP helps close that gap by making vouchers usable in real housing markets, allowing low-income families to secure stable housing before a crisis occurs. This lowers costs in the long run because it is cheaper for the state to provide housing for people than to find shelter beds after they become homeless. Learn more

Immigration

State and local law enforcement resources should not be used to enforce federal immigration law or support ICE terrorizing immigrant communities. Passing New York for All frees up local law enforcement to focus on keeping our communities safe and protects sanctuary cities from federal retaliation by mandating non-collaboration at the state level. Learn more

New Yorkers should not be profiting from the detention of immigrants and neither should our government. Banning contracts for immigration detention by passing Dignity Not Detention will stop the use of local jails and prisons to hold immigrants and prevent private prisons from profiteering from ICE. Learn more

Infrastructure / Transportation

Local roads, bridges, emergency response, and basic municipal services are public infrastructure used by far more than just the people who live in a community, they support regional travel, commerce, tourism, agriculture, and emergency response across the state. Upstate communities maintain this infrastructure with limited commercial and industrial tax bases, yet the benefits extend well beyond their borders. State cost-sharing through formula funding recognizes that these are statewide public services, not purely local amenities, and ensures communities are not forced to carry costs that serve the entire state. Learn more

Wages / Job Benefits

I support policies that strengthen collective bargaining and ensure workers can access local, family-sustaining jobs with strong labor standards, including prevailing wages. That means protecting workers from retaliation, ensuring fair union elections, securing first contracts through arbitration, enforcing wage and hour laws, preventing misclassification, and holding employers accountable when they violate the law. Learn more

Worker power also depends on basic economic security. I support fair scheduling, paid family and medical leave, paid sick time, and strong protections for essential and care workers. As industries grow, including clean energy, broadband, and technology, we must ensure these jobs come with full organizing rights, strong labor protections, and a real voice on the job. Learn more