Bail Reform Looms Large As Budget Deadline Nears
By Anna Gronewold | March 23, 2022 | Politico
Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie are in lockstep about one thing as the budget deadline nears. “We need a budget,” Stewart-Cousins said this afternoon in the Capitol.
It’s increasingly clear that everything else remains in flux as the March 31 due date approaches, as both Heastie and Stewart-Cousins reiterated that all 10 points of Hochul’s newly floated public safety proposal have little shot of making it into the final spending plan.
“I think all 10 points would be hard,” Stewart-Cousins said.
A couple of items that have fiscal impact, such as more money for mental health services, might earn legislative OKs. But Heastie said that even if there were interest in the more-controversial components, such as one that would allow judges more discretion in setting bail, they shouldn’t be forced through the process now.
“Members just want to do their jobs and think about this and understand why there are differing opinions, different interpretations of law, and I just don’t know if that can be figured out in two days,” Heastie said.
Stewart-Cousins noted that her colleagues spent years reviewing the issue before passing bail reform in 2019 and then making some changes a year later.
“There were a lot of discussions before we did the original reforms. And again, we're always happy to look again, but we're not going back to a place that we weren’t at before we even began the discussion on bail,” she said.
At about the same time she was speaking, the Daily News published an op-ed from Hochul and Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin laying out the governor’s clearest positions on bail reform to date. Hochul said she doesn’t believe that any data supports the idea that the bail reform laws are responsible for increased crime rates.
She and Benjamin do, however, believe that small changes are needed, and that includes giving judges ability to set bail in more specific circumstances such as for repeat offenders and in all felony cases involving illegal guns. “We are committed to protecting the progress we’ve made toward a fairer criminal justice system,” the op-ed reads. “But that is not at odds with making thoughtful, measured changes to our laws that would strengthen public safety.”
There are five session days scheduled before the deadline, and even one public disagreement has the potential to disrupt what would otherwise be easy wins. Albany is back, baby!
ENVIRONMENTAL BUDGET CHATTER: It’s still too early to declare anything dead or done yet — there’s a whole week left! State Sen.Todd Kaminsky (D-Nassau County) has made it clear that his major priority is an extended producer responsibility measure to require producers of products and packaging materials to pay for the costs of disposal. Asked about the chances of making changes to freshwater wetlands policy changes in the budget, Kaminsky said: “I’m hoping so, I think that and EPR are two substantive issues that we have an opportunity to solve longstanding problems and we should take advantage of it.”
Kaminsky chairs the Environmental Conservation Committee in the Senate. His counterpart in the Assembly, Steve Englebright (D-Suffolk), told advocates Tuesday night that he’d rather see extended producer responsibility dealt with outside the budget. Judith Enck, a former EPA Region 2 Administrator and current head of Beyond Plastics, is a strong backer of that position. She’s skeptical of both Hochul’s and Kaminsky’s version of EPR. “I do know that if it’s even close to the Hochul bill or the Kaminsky bill, it would be a very bad precedent that other states would follow,” Enck said.
Englebright is eager to see the Department of Environmental Conservation get funding in the forthcoming bond act to preserve wetlands. Both the Assembly and Senate proposed boosting Hochul’s $4 billion proposal even higher in their one-house budgets. — Marie J. French