2025 Legislative Session Dates
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Key Takeaways:

  • New York passed the RAISE Act targeting frontier AI model developers with transparency requirements including safety documentation and 72-hour incident reporting to the Attorney General, differing from algorithmic discrimination bills that regulate AI users.
  • The bill faces an uncertain future due to New York's unique gubernatorial review process, where Governor Hochul can delay requesting the bill until year-end and potentially wait until New Year's Eve to make a decision.
  • Governor Hochul frequently uses "chapter amendments" to negotiate changes with legislative leaders before signing bills, utilizing this tool more than any predecessor on roughly one in seven bills sent to her desk.
  • The tech industry is expected to launch major lobbying campaigns similar to those that led to California Governor Newsom's veto of SB 1047, though New York's extended timeline provides more opportunity for negotiation and amendments.


Before it adjourns this week, the New York Legislature passed an important AI safety bill — the RAISE Act — through both chambers last Thursday. Unlike the algorithmic discrimination bills that have proliferated this year, which place requirements on any organization using AI tools, New York’s RAISE Act is an AI safety bill, placing transparency requirements on the developers of the most powerful AI models.

AI Safety Legislation Targets Major Developers with Transparency and Safety Requirements

The RAISE Act is primarily a transparency bill. The bill would require developers of frontier AI systems (i.e., OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, xAI, Meta) to draft, maintain, and publish safety documents, take steps to adhere to those safety documents, and disclose to the AG within 72 hours after a safety incident has taken place (this is a similar timeline and procedure to cybersecurity breach reporting). The RAISE Act would also prohibit a frontier AI model developer from releasing a model that the developer determines would create an unreasonable risk of “critical harm” to the public (i.e., either 100 serious injuries or a billion dollars in damages).

Industry Opposition Expected: Lessons from California's SB 1047

The last major AI safety bill to make it to a governor’s desk was CA SB 1047, which launched major lobbying campaigns from the tech industry and high-profile press coverage (it even got its own mini-documentary). Ultimately, Gov. Newsom (D) vetoed SB 1047. We expect a similar tsunami to hit the RAISE Act as Governor Hochul (D) must decide whether to sign it into law. But unlike California, the legislative procedure in New York could allow for as late as a New Year’s Eve decision on the RAISE Act. Governor Hochul could even negotiate specific changes of legislative language in exchange for her signature. 

New York's Unique Legislative Timeline: Why Decisions Can Wait Until New Year's Eve

Here's the timeline. Technically, the New York Constitution gives the governor 10 days (excluding Sundays) for bills sent by the legislature (30 days if sent while the legislature is out of session), but the constitution does not indicate when lawmakers are required to send a bill after passage. According to legislative rules, if a bill passes the Assembly first, the bill must be sent 10, 30, or 45 days after the bill is returned by the Senate (depending on the time of year). But if the Senate passed the bill first — which was the case with the RAISE Act — then the bill sponsor can request that the bill be held, typically until the governor sends a request for the bill. 

Wait, why is the governor calling the shots? This is a longstanding agreement between the legislature and the governor’s office in New York. Traditionally, lawmakers will not send a bill to the governor until the governor requests it. This is usually done in batches of bills. But for particularly controversial bills, such as the RAISE Act, the governor can wait until the very end of the year to make a decision. For example, lawmakers in New York passed a non-compete ban in June of 2023, but the governor waited until Dec. 22, 2023, to request the bill and then veto it. 

Chapter Amendments: Governor Hochul's Tool for Negotiating Bill Changes

But the extended timeline for gubernatorial action is not the only complication for a bill after legislative approval in New York. The governor has another tool called “chapter amendments.” This is an option for the governor to negotiate changes to the bill with legislative leaders and the bill sponsor. These changes can vary between technical adjustments, substantive threshold changes, or significant dilutions of legislation approved by the legislature. In return for the governor’s demanded changes, the governor will sign the original bill, and legislative leadership will introduce a separate piece of legislation to implement the agreed-upon changes. Technically, there’s no formal law or rule requiring the legislature to follow through after the governor signs the original bill, but no legislature has dared to find out what would happen if they renege on the deal. And Gov. Hochul has utilized chapter amendments more than any of her predecessors (making changes to roughly 1 in 7 bills sent to her). 

While the RAISE Act survived the legislative part of its journey to becoming law, it still has a long road ahead now that the governor gets to make use of New York’s unique post-passage procedures.

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This article appeared in our Morning MultiState newsletter on June 17, 2025. For more timely insights like this, be sure to sign up for our Morning MultiState weekly morning tipsheet. We created Morning MultiState with state government affairs professionals in mind — sign up to receive the latest from our experts in your inbox every Tuesday morning. Click here to sign up.