From the Alliance: The legislature and the executive have reportedly reached a deal on bail reforms and will quickly move on to housing and the rest of the budget. We need everyone to join us in this final push to get the 8.5% COLA in the final budget! A substantial investment in services and the workforce cannot wait another year. It is imperative we receive this funding in this budget because next year’s COLA could be lower than 3%, based on the decreasing consumer price index (CPI). While lower inflation is welcome, Behavioral Health services are already suffering from a massive shortfall and any years without substantial investment will push us further back and cost more lives. We must get the 8.5% COLA this year or risk continued underfunding and a shrinking workforce. Use this link to email your legislators today, tomorrow, and every day until we get the 8.5% COLA!
Officials Reach a Tentative Compromise on Bail
By Rebecca C Lewis | City and State New York | April 17, 2023
After weeks of holding up the budget over her proposal to further tweak the state bail laws, a source with knowledge of negotiations told City & State that Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders have all but finalized a deal that would give judges greater discretion to set bail in violent felony cases. The compromise would remove the requirement that judges impose the “least restrictive means” when determining whether to set bail for violent felonies but would still define bail strictly as a means of ensuring a defendant’s return to court. The governor had originally proposed removing that strict definition of bail.
With the budget now over two weeks late, legislative leaders and the governor have repeatedly said that the fight over bail has been the major holdup. The state’s controversial bail reform law has already been modified twice since it was originally passed in 2019 – once in 2020 and once last year – to make more offenses eligible for cash bail. Hochul proposed further changes to the law in this year’s executive budget, which both state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie resisted.
After the Legislature passed a second budget extender last week, Heastie said that “most of the oxygen is still on discussing bail.” Hochul had dug in during negotiations over her proposal to give judges greater discretion to set bail for violent felonies, insisting that leaders reach an agreement on that before moving on to other parts of the budget. Although her proposal would not make any more offenses eligible for bail, it would remove the requirement that judges impose the “least restrictive means” when setting pretrial conditions for those felonies.