Following yesterday’s State of the State address, the Alliance for Rights and Recovery has taken a closer look at the proposals outlined by Governor Hochul, building on our initial reactions shared in yesterday’s e-news update (see: Breaking News: NY State of the State Highlights – The Alliance for Rights and Recovery) with additional details now available, several important themes and implications for mental health, substance use, and community-based services are coming into clearer focus.
Concerns About Police Co-Response and the Need for Health-Led Alternatives
The Alliance is concerned about the proposal to expand SCOUT Teams in the subway system, which pair MTA police officers with clinical staff to respond to people experiencing homelessness or behavioral health crises. While connection to services is an important goal, expanding police co-response models risks further criminalizing people who are experiencing mental health or substance use challenges and homelessness. These individuals are often victims of violence rather than perpetrators, yet law enforcement involvement can escalate situations, discourage engagement, and prioritize removal over long-term support. What is needed are peer centered and health-led, voluntary responses that focus on stabilization, trust, and sustained connections to services.
Instead of expanding police-centered approaches, New York should increase investments in non-police outreach and crisis response teams, with a strong emphasis on peer-led models that are proven to support meaningful engagement and recovery. We urge the state to expand non-police crisis response systems modeled after Daniel’s Law, which demonstrate that peer- and health-focused responses can improve outcomes, reduce harm, and strengthen community trust without relying on law enforcement.
We applaud the Governor’s support for the establishment of a First Responder Behavioral Health Center of Excellence to expand peer-to-peer support and wellness programs for first responders statewide.
Integrating Mental Health and Substance Use Services
We appreciate that the Governor’s agenda includes a number of proposals that align with long-standing advocacy priorities across the behavioral health and recovery communities. The address signals meaningful attention to integrating mental health and substance use services, including allowing clinics to operate under a single joint OMH–OASAS license and creating a new “Co-Occurring Capable” designation for providers serving people with complex needs. These steps could reduce fragmentation and improve continuity of care for New Yorkers navigating multiple systems.
Youth Mental Health and Substance Use Services
We are also encouraged by the focus on youth mental health and substance use supports, particularly initiatives aimed at LGBTQ+ youth, Indigenous youth, and other young people facing disproportionate risks. Proposals to expand youth safe spaces, host a youth-led substance use prevention symposium, open up to 15 new Youth Clubhouses, develop a young adult recovery residence for people recovering from opioid addiction, scale culturally responsive mental health supports for Indigenous youth, and strengthen suicide prevention efforts reflect a more holistic and preventative approach to youth well-being.
Health Insurance Reform
The Governor’s emphasis on prior authorization reform is another critical step forward. Proposals to standardize formularies, extend the validity of authorizations for chronic conditions, expand continuity-of-care protections, increase insurer reporting requirements, and launch a public education campaign respond directly to long-standing concerns about delays, denials, and administrative barriers that keep people from accessing timely services. These reforms, combined with broader efforts to improve healthcare affordability and coverage, including protecting Essential Plan coverage for up to 1.3 million New Yorkers amid federal threats, are especially important in the current policy climate.
Housing and Food Assistance
The State of the State also highlighted investments and proposals that intersect with recovery and stability, including using $71 million to increase funding for OMH and OASAS supportive housing rates for over 23,000 units, new capital funding ($250 million) to expand affordable housing, protections for renters, strengthened addiction supports, hunger prevention funding amid uncertainty about federal nutrition programs like SNAP, and new behavioral health supports for first responders. Together, these initiatives recognize that mental health and substance use outcomes are deeply tied to housing, food security, and economic stability.
What We Hope to See in the Upcoming Budget Proposal
At the same time, there are notable gaps. The Governor’s address did not include a proposal to carve behavioral health services out of Medicaid managed care, despite overwhelming evidence that managed care has created excessive red tape, delayed payments to providers, and barriers to care for individuals. Nor did it include the sought 2.7% inflationary increase for the human services agencies and their workforce, which is essential to stabilizing providers, retaining staff, and sustaining services at a time of rising costs and federal funding uncertainty.
As we move toward the release of the Executive Budget later this month, the Alliance looks forward to working with the Governor’s office and the Legislature to strengthen and build on these proposals. We will continue to advocate for a budget that fully protects and invests in mental health and substance use services, supports the workforce that delivers effective support, and safeguards the broader human services infrastructure that is essential to improving quality of life and recovery for New Yorkers across the state.