
NYS Governor Hochul’s 2025-2026 Executive Budget Proposal: A Second Look
January 23, 2025
By Luke Sikinyi, Vice President for Public Policy and Harvey Rosenthal, CEO
The following update is based on our continuing review of the Governor’s Executive Budget proposal to more fully assess its implications for New York’s mental health system.
From the start, we must reiterate our vehement opposition to the proposed expansion of involuntary inpatient and outpatient commitment in statute. This approach fails to address the root causes of the current mental health crisis and our system’s responsibility to use all resources to voluntarily engage the people we serve.
Instead, we call on the state to prioritize the use of statutorily approved Incident Review Panels to investigate tragic events as to whether our system performed in an appropriate and accountable fashion and to identify systemic deficiencies and corrective measures that improve care and promote community safety for all.
Key Priorities and Funding Requirements
We are encouraged to see investments in several recovery-centered innovations that the Alliance helped to create and/or promote, namely the INSET, community hospital Peer Bridger and Clubhouse expansion initiatives. We will continue to focus on strengthening service coordination, increasing accountability, and ensuring that resources are directed toward evidence-based, community-centered care.
However, these programs and others which the Governor and Legislature have funded over the past several years cannot be successful if we do not provide adequate funding for agencies to be fully staffed. While we are appreciative of the Governor proposing a 2.1% cost-of-living adjustment, this will be insufficient to address the workforce shortages and rising operational costs plaguing community agencies. We will continue advocating for a 7.8% rate enhancement to sustain high-quality care and attract and retain a well-trained workforce.
Standing Against Involuntary Commitment Expansion
The Alliance unequivocally opposes the proposed expansions of involuntary treatment, which traumatize individuals, erodes trust in the system, and diverts critical resources away from solutions that actually work. Lowering standards to promote the increased use of involuntary hospitalizations will be much more costly to taxpayers and needlessly overwhelm already overburdened hospitals.
The proposed statutory changes to Kendra’s Law outpatient commitment program erode privacy and due process protections and, by requiring people to go before a judge in a court of law, has a criminalizing effect, as recently stated by the co-author of New York’s Kendra’s study Dr. Marvin Swartz. Further, greater use of the AOT program only increases the program’s disproportionate impact on communities of color, who are involved in 4 out 5 outpatient commitment orders in New York City.
Coercive policies fail to address the root causes of homelessness and mental health crises, such as decades of underfunded community mental health systems, a lack of affordable housing, and structural inequities. Investing in these outdated and punitive approaches diverts attention and funding from effective solutions that build trust, stability, and long-term recovery.
Additional Provisions Highlighted in the Budget
The following provisions, not included in our initial review, represent further opportunities for system improvement.
Mental Health
- Teen Mental Health First Aid: $1.5 million to expand training for teens and adults to address mental health and substance use challenges.
- Enhancements to the Capital District Psychiatric Center Crisis Unit: $2.4 million ($7 million fully annualized) for an 8-bed acute care unit and Mobile Integration Team expansion.
- Street Medicine and Street Psychiatry for SOS Teams: $2.8 million to enhance Safe Options Support (SOS) teams with medical and psychiatric care for unsheltered individuals.
Substance Use Services
- Opioid Stewardship Investments: $200 million reappropriated for harm reduction initiatives, including street outreach, medication affordability, and training for law enforcement and correctional staff.
- Information Technology Investments for OASAS: $10 million as part of a five-year $50 million investment to upgrade OASAS data collection and reporting systems. $5 million in annual funding for IT improvements.
- Reimagined Vocational Services: $11.4 million to reprocure vocational, job placement, and day services for individuals with substance use disorders.
- Mobile Medication Units (MMUs): $2.5 million to expand MMUs providing opioid treatment medications in underserved regions.
- Addiction Treatment Centers Evaluation: $500,000 to analyze State-operated Addiction Treatment Centers to enhance services and address unmet needs.
- Technical Assistance Center for Opioid Treatment: $300,000 annually to support opioid treatment programs (OTPs) in adapting to regulatory changes and enhancing services.
- Expanded Street Outreach Teams: $3 million to integrate OASAS street outreach teams with SOS teams in high-need areas.
- Agency Staffing and Operating Investments: $3 million for additional staff and operational costs at OASAS, including opioid settlement data analysis and cannabis use disorder programs.
- Minimum Wage Support: $53 million to support minimum wage increases for staff at OPWDD, OMH, and OASAS programs.
- Interpreter for the Interagency Coordinating Council: Additional funding to support an interpreter for individuals who are Deaf, Deafblind, or Hard of Hearing
Criminal Justice
- Criminal Justice System Investments: $290 million for community investment, crime prevention, law enforcement, prosecution, and reentry services.
- Correctional Facility Security: $400 million for fixed cameras, $18.4 million for body-worn cameras, and $7.2 million for the Office of Special Investigations expansion.
- Reduce Reoffending Through Justice Initiatives: $2 million for workforce reentry programs focused on green energy and sustainable industries.
- Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities
- Increased Reimbursement rates for OPWDD Non-Profit Providers: $850 million in annualized funding to increase wages for OPWDD providers’ frontline workforce.
- New Service Opportunities: $60 million annually for OPWDD program reforms and new services to support individuals entering the service system or whose needs have changed.
- Regional Disability Clinics: $25 million in capital funding for building modifications and equipment to increase accessibility and improve healthcare quality for people with developmental disabilities.
- Expanded Housing Development: $15 million to increase independent living opportunities for individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD).
Summary
The Alliance is committed to working with the Legislature and the Governor to ensure that the final budget agreement provides the appropriate funding and oversight necessary to operate an engaging, effective, well-coordinated and accountable service system that is grounded in unremitting and successful efforts to secure voluntary participation of the New Yorkers with major mental health, substance use and trauma-related conditions we are dedicated to support.
In this way, New York can be a national exemplar for a state-of-the-art progressive system of care, rather than a regressing one based on increased reliance on coercion and institutionalization. As part of this effort, the Alliance will advocate for the inclusion of critical initiatives such as Daniel’s Law Mental Health Response Teams to provide compassionate, peer-led crisis interventions and passage of the Treatment Not Jail Legislation to expand mental health treatment courts and diversion programs that reduce recidivism and support recovery. Together, these measures can deliver meaningful change for individuals and make our communities safer for all.