ALBANY — Governor Kathy Hochul has moved to approve some of the year’s most impactful pieces of legislation in the last few days, clearing her desk of the last of hundreds of bills handed to her by the state legislature.

Each year, Hochul has until the end of the year to approve, veto or negotiate changes to all the bills that the state legislature sends her way. While the legislature has the power to force action on its own schedule, leaders have typically agreed to wait for the governor’s office to request the bills themselves. The governor often waits for their team to review a bill before calling for it, and that often takes longer for controversial or legally complex bills that aren’t a part of the governor’s agenda.

In the last few weeks, Hochul has moved to approve, amend or veto hundreds of the over-850 bills sent her way this year; on Friday, the Governor approved dozens of major bills that have gotten significant attention this year.

On Friday, Governor Hochul negotiated some changes and signed a prison reform package that addresses 10 key issues in state prisons and local jails. The package includes that the state Department of Corrections implement a wider network of cameras and microphones in its prisons, share video footage related to deaths inside prisons with the state Attorney General’s office within 72 hours of the death, make a public notification within 48 hours of notifying the next of kin when someone in prison dies, and requires the department conduct a study on deaths over the last 10 years.

The package also increases the number of commissioners on the State Commission on Corrections, the oft-criticized board tasked with keeping a guardrail on the state prison system. The commission will now have two extra part-time members, with at least one member being someone who has served a sentence in a New York state prison.

The reform package also gives the Corrections Association of New York wider access to state prisons, and opens a pathway for more people to privately speak with the association. CANY is an independent oversight group with the power to enter prisons and interview staff, officials and incarcerated people.

Gov. Hochul also signed a bill that ends the 100-foot rule, an often-discussed state regulation that allows natural gas utilities to tack on the cost of connecting a new customer to all existing gas customers within 100 feet of the new hookup. That bill is cited as one of many state regulations that unfairly propped up the natural gas industry, in opposition to state efforts to electrify and phase out fossil fuel use where possible.

The 100-foot rule bill was the only successful anti-natural gas bill to make it out of the state legislature this year; lawmakers had debated the much more radical NY HEAT Act, which would have worked to phase out natural gas by actively removing natural gas networks based on a neighborhood vote system. That bill was killed in the state Assembly, and despite efforts to revive a smaller version of it, lawmakers still couldn’t agree on concrete efforts to shrink the footprint of the second-most popular heating and cooking fuel source in New York state.

Hochul also signed, with some changes, the RAISE Act, which establishes a broad set of safety standards for advanced generative, ‘artificial intelligence’ models operating in the state. She negotiated amendments that pared back some of the requirements, essentially matching New York’s laws with those already in place in California.

The RAISE Act requires that big and small models alike implement an incident reporting system for when their models go wrong or potentially cause damage or pose danger. Risk assessment plans and fines for violations of state regulations are also now in place, and any safety incident must be reported within 72 hours of discovery. The state Department of Financial Services also gets a new office aimed at tracking transparency and safety in generative intelligence models.

The move comes just as President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order that seeks to strip states of existing AI regulations and block them from implementing new ones. That order is already being challenged in court.

Hochul signed a bill that requires hospitals implement domestic violence prevention programs, and another that requires all workplaces regulated by OSHA to carry naloxone or another ‘opioid antagonist’ to reverse overdose in their first aid supplies.

The Governor’s most recent round of vetoes include a bill that would force limited liability companies to make public their owners’ names, as well as a number of bills to provide state or local government employees with enhanced retirement benefits. Hochul said in a joint veto message for over a dozen Assembly and Senate bills relating to employee benefits that the total cost would be nearly $350 million to state and local governments, all without a specific plan for funding.

Hochul also vetoed a bill, which she’s struck down once before when it made it to her desk, that would push the time frame within which a local hospital can close a ward or its entire facility to nearly nine months. Current law only requires 90 days of notice to state officials. Hochul noted that the bill would be a burden to financially struggling hospitals if they have to make short-term adjustments to their operations, but the Governor said she’d directed the state Department of Health to consider reforms to the hospital closure process within the existing power they have. She said that process concluded with adjustments this month; the department now requires early and consistent communication from hospital administration whenever they even start to consider closing a ward or a facility, permanently or temporarily.

And Hochul also vetoed a bill that would bar Medicaid from requiring prior authorization for HIV medications before covering the cost of them; in her veto message, Hochul said the bill, while well intentioned, would only throw out an already efficient system where prescriptions are evaluated, and only when it seems like the drug won’t work with the patient’s needs does Medicaid request prior authorization.

“Medicaid has a prior authorization program that operates on a 24/7 basis, maintains a 24-hour turnaround time for authorization determinations, and allows for a 72-hour emergency supply,” Hochul said. “This bill would eliminate those critical patient safety protections and would not improve an already successful and efficient process.”