
Alliance for Rights and Recovery’s Response to
the 2025-26 Executive Budget Proposal: First Look
Alliance Welcomes Peer Bridger, INSET and Clubhouse Expansion
Decry Expansions in Involuntary Inpatient and Outpatient Commitment
Seeks to Build on a 2.1% Rate Hike
Call for Increased Oversight through Incident Review Panels
January 21, 2025
Contact: Harvey Rosenthal, CEO, 518-527-0564, harveyr@rightsandrecovery.org;
Luke Sikinyi, Director for Public Policy, 518-703-0264, lukes@rightsandrecovery.org
The Alliance for Rights and Recovery issued the following statement today regarding NYS Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2025-25 Executive Budget proposal.
“The Executive Budget proposal builds on the unprecedented investments that the Governor and the legislature have made over the past two years that reflect a commitment to advance a stronger community-based mental health system and safer communities for all,” said Luke Sikinyi, Director for Public Policy and Engagement.
Towards those ends, the Alliance is pleased to see expansions in 4 proven models that we believe will make significant advances in engaging and supporting New Yorkers with major mental health, substance use and trauma-related challenges, especially individuals in crisis who are disconnected from more traditional approaches. These initiatives will:
- Bring back Clubhouses to upstate New York: Clubhouses are member-driven programs that provide individuals with serious mental health conditions access to social support, life skills training, employment resources and a sense of community. The proposed budget includes funding for up to 7 new Clubhouses.
- Deploy innovative Peer Bridger Programs in community hospitals that have long records of success in assisting people to make successful well-supported transitions to their communities for as long as is needed
- Expand peer-led INSET outreach teams that have demonstrated impressive success in engaging and supporting disconnected individuals who might otherwise be considered for an outpatient commitment order
- Increase Investment in “low barrier” Housing Firstprogramsthat accept individuals regardless of their involvement in treatment or sobriety programs.
“While we appreciate the Governor’s inclusion of rate hike for overwhelmed and overburdened community agencies and their workforce, this investment falls far short of what is needed,” said Sikinyi. Advocates are calling for a 7.8% rate enhancement for mental health and substance use agencies to address critical workforce shortages and rising operational costs that must be addressed to ensure that these essential services remain accessible and effective.
Of great interest is a $16.5 million to counties to use to expand their capacity to make ‘AOT services’ like housing, crisis and peer support services to individuals on a voluntary basis. “This will improve statewide consistency and effectiveness of AOT services while also offering enhanced voluntary service packages for individuals who wish to access enhanced intensive services.
Additional Provisions
- $1.6 million for Aging in Place Pilot Program
- $1.5 million to expand maternal mental health services
- 24/7 Welcome Centers in NYC Subway Stations: $6.5 million to support the creation of spaces within five New York City subway stations for mobile outreach teams to better connect and coordinate services for unhoused individuals.
- Expanding Forensic Inpatient Capacity:
- $160 million for the creation of a new 100-bed forensic inpatient unit on Wards Island.
- Housing Investments:
- $11.9 million to increase stipends for nearly 18,000 OMH Supported Housing units to keep pace with rising property costs.
- ESSHI rates will be increased from $25,000/unit to $31,000/unit, with an additional $3,000 for units in the New York City metro area, and NYSSHP funding will be increased by more than 40 percent.
- $25 million to meet the ongoing demand for supportive housing and to maintain existing units that provide a safe place to live for many of the most housing insecure and vulnerable New Yorkers
- Commercial Insurance Compliance
- $1 million for additional staff to monitor compliance with the new law that requires commercial insurers reimburse behavioral health services at or above the Medicaid rate effective January 1, 2025
The Alliance will be working strenuously with the Legislature and the Hochul Administration to invest in a number of additional priorities including:
- Daniel’s Law Mental Health Response Teams comprised of peer counselors and emergency medical technicians to successfully deescalate crises in ways are intended to divert individuals from contact with the criminal justice system.
- Criminal Justice Diversion Programs, including expanding access to mental health treatment courts through passage of Treatment not Jail legislation and alternatives to incarceration.
Assailing the Expansion of Coercion in NYS
“At the same time, the Executive Budget proposes to implement in statute one of the greatest expansions of involuntary treatment New York has seen,” said CEO Harvey Rosenthal. “The policies of coercion are more likely to hide than to truly help New Yorkers who are suffering and struggling on our streets and will fail to address the root causes of homelessness and mental health crises, often driving people away rather than towards the support they need. Albany should reject efforts to make it the coercion capital of the country,” he said.
Accordingly, we urge state legislators to reject proposed expansions in the use of:
Involuntary hospital confinements
- We need to expand access to community services that work rather than adding the number of professionals who can effectuate coercive orders.
- Lowering the standard for involuntary hospitalization to provide distressed individuals with appropriate access to food, shelter and clothing is a highly costly and ineffective alternative to investing in community and social service programs that can do the same in far less traumatizing and costly ways.
Kendra’s Law outpatient commitment orders
- Too often we blame the patient for our failure to do what is necessary to successfully engage them voluntarily. We should increase the budget’s proposed level of investments in outreach and engagement approaches that foster trusted relationships with staff that last.
- Easing consent requirements to share patient information erodes due process privacy protections.
- Expansion of Kendra’s Law outpatient commitment programs that single out and criminalize people of color will only further emphasize our failure to successfully engage those communities.
“Enhancing and expanding community services will not in and of themselves not help us achieve our goals of helping people in the most acute states of crisis,” Rosenthal said. “We must implement a mechanism to ensure that the state offers engaging, effective, accountable services and most of all well-coordinated care.”
“In too many instances, terrible tragedies might have been averted if a specified provider was identified to coordinate services and sustain a trusted and reliable bond with people who needlessly cycled through our often complicated and fragmented systems of care,” said Sikinyi.
The Alliance believes that the state should put in place the use of Incident Review Panels, a key recommendation put forward by a 2008 NYS/NYC Mental Health and Criminal Justice Panel that was convened to identify preventive or corrective strategies to avoid tragic episodes of violence involving people with mental illnesses. These panels would promptly investigate the care provided to people who were involved in episodes of violence to recommend corrective actions and identify system deficiencies.
This recommendation was adopted in statute in 2014 but never been implemented.
“The Governor and Legislature have been strong partners in advancing landmark reforms, and we look forward to working together to ensure that the budget delivers the meaningful changes our state desperately needs,” said Sikinyi. “By advancing voluntary care, enhanced coordination, increased accountability, and system investments, New York can lead the way in creating a truly transformative mental health system.”
Stay tuned for more details tomorrow.