We’re closer than ever to bringing public banking to New York. This morning, we published an op-ed about a new bill advancing in Albany in the final days of the state legislative session, which we describe as “the most promising opportunity in over a century to establish a full-fledged public bank in the U.S.”

Click here to read the op-ed.

The bill, called the Bank of Rochester Act, would authorize the city of Rochester to create its own municipal public bank. It is modeled on the New York Public Banking Act, which we’ve championed for the past five years as an urgent matter of racial and economic justice.

The Rochester bill, which the key Assembly Banks Committee approved last week, would establish a public bank to hold the city of Rochester’s deposits and reinvest in local economic development. While smaller in scale than the statewide framework the New York Public Banking Act would create, the bill’s passage would be no less historic. Hundreds of public banks exist around the world, but the only one operating in the U.S. is the Bank of North Dakota, established in 1919.

Nearly 50 years ago, the state Assembly passed a bill to establish public banking in New York, only to have the state Senate block it under pressure from Wall Street. Today, the banking lobby is once again pulling out all the stops to obstruct this broadly supported measure. 

With your help, we can rewrite history. All of the pressure we’ve brought to bear – from launching the Public Bank NYC coalition in 2018, to galvanizing a statewide grassroots movement for public banking, to winning the support of key leaders like state Attorney General Letitia James, and much more – has brought us to this critical moment.

Now we need to drive the campaign to victory. Use this toolkit to call your State Senator right now and tell them to bring public banking to New York, starting with the Bank of Rochester Act.

Winning passage of this bill would be a major breakthrough for the city of Rochester and a pivotal step toward establishing public banking in NYC and throughout the state. Together, we can build a just, transparent, and accountable financial system that puts people over profit.

In solidarity,

New Economy Project

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