Alliance Alert: The Alliance for Rights and Recovery applauds efforts to expand employment opportunities for New Yorkers with disabilities and believes programs like the Preferred Source Program demonstrate the value of investing in people’s abilities rather than focusing on their limitations. Employment is a critical part of recovery and community inclusion, providing financial stability, purpose, social connection, and improved health outcomes. As New York prepares for the implementation of new federal Medicaid work requirements, it is more important than ever that the state ensure people with disabilities have meaningful opportunities to succeed in the workforce rather than face unnecessary barriers to maintaining their healthcare coverage.
New York should build on successful models like this by expanding supported employment and supported education services, strengthening partnerships between state agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private employers, and creating more competitive, integrated employment opportunities for people with disabilities. These investments will help individuals gain the skills, training, and ongoing supports needed to obtain and maintain employment while meeting new federal standards. Rather than allowing work requirements to become another barrier to accessing needed services, New York has an opportunity to respond by making employment supports more accessible and effective for people with mental health and substance use challenges and other disabilities.
These important issues will be explored at the Alliance for Rights and Recovery’s 44th Annual Conference, where attendees can participate in workshops examining recent state and federal policy changes, including Medicaid work requirements, and learn about innovative strategies to help more people successfully enter and remain in the workforce through recovery-oriented employment, education, and community supports.
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Nonprofit Ramps Up Efforts to Expand NY Disabled Workers Program
By Gabe Levin | Times Union | August 17, 2026
ALBANY – The authority of a nonprofit to help thousands of New Yorkers with disabilities find work is set to expire in 2028, but advocates and a local assemblyman are seeking to make the corporation’s agreement with the state permanent and also pushing for changes that would expand the jobs available through the program.
The nonprofit New York State Industries for the Disabled, which was founded in 1975, needs to have its agreement with the state renewed every three years. The program’s supporters are urging state lawmakers to make the Preferred Source Program permanent, strengthen enforcement and expand the types of work available to people with disabilities. The group will lobby for those changes during and in the run up to next year’s legislative session, chief executive Maureen O’Brien told the Times Union.
The program gives preference to organizations that employ and train people with disabilities when state agencies purchase certain goods and services. But O’Brien said there is no enforcement mechanism to ensure agencies consider the program.
Assemblyman John T. McDonald III, D-Cohoes, said he supports expanding the program, noting that its current job categories reflect outdated assumptions about what people with disabilities can do.
The nonprofit has contracts for products and services with government agencies, other nonprofits and private companies. Disabled workers perform at least half of the work for those businesses under contracts. The organization works with 42 private businesses and 109 member agencies that specialize in job training, according to O’Brien, who added that the average wage for a worker on an employment contract is $22 an hour.
“Right now in New York state, if you are disabled, you’re unemployed at 67%,” O’Brien said. “It’s a staggering statistic, and people deserve to have an opportunity to work.”
After learning about the program, 85% of registered voters surveyed across New York said expanding it should be a priority for state lawmakers, according to a new Rockefeller Institute of Government survey of 1,000 registered voters. New York State Industries for the Disabled commissioned the survey and shared its results with the Times Union.
In 2023, the nonprofit’s member agencies employed nearly 4,800 people with disabilities who collectively worked more than 3.6 million hours across the state, according to a separate report from the Rockefeller Institute of Government.
“There’s no logical reason to not renew this or make this a permanent program,” said Howard Gross, chief executive of Menands-based eBizDocs, which helps government agencies and businesses digitize documents and participates in the Preferred Source Program.
One of Gross’ employees with a disability, Mark Roman, said in an interview that the program has had a direct impact on his life.
“The Preferred Source Program got me in the door,” Roman said. Without it, he added, he would not have had the ability to afford basic things, such as the car he drives or even furniture.
O’Brien said she wants the type of work covered by the Preferred Source Program broadened, though changing the scope of the program is difficult.
Much of the work covered now involves custodial services and document imaging. O’Brien said the nonprofit wants to create more opportunities in temporary staffing, beyond solely clerical roles, because those jobs can serve as a gateway to steady, long-term work for state agencies.
McDonald, a pharmacist and former Cohoes mayor, said he wants to see the scope of the program expanded, too.
The program, he said, “is restrictive in the type of jobs right now, and that goes back 40, 50 years ago, because the thinking was that individuals with disabilities could only do janitorial jobs. The reality is, they could do much more.”