New York City comptroller candidate Justin Brannan has a plan to reinvest a $500 million piece of the city's multibillion-dollar pension funds — and use it to pay for universal child care.

Brannan does not claim his plan would achieve this increasingly popular policy goal on its own. But similar to how the city comptroller’s office has been used to increase investment in affordable housing, Brannan said he would use the office to expand and support the city’s child care infrastructure.

He's running against Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine in an increasingly competitive Democratic primary for city comptroller.

Similar to the marquee Democratic mayoral race on the top of the ballot, where nearly all the candidates say that the city should do more to expand child care, both of the leading comptroller candidates agree the city must achieve universal child care, an increasingly salient issue among primary voters. But experts who reviewed Brannan’s proposal told Gothamist that if implemented, it would represent the first time the tools of the city comptroller’s office would be harnessed to fund child care.