Gov. Hochul is taking a firm stand with her fellow Democrats in the Legislature over the late state budget (which was due on April 1) and important policy matters. Good for her. Hochul must hold fast to two critical public safety initiatives she is pushing: discovery reform on criminal prosecutions and commitment of the seriously mentally ill.
The discovery rules were changed in 2019, making it fairer for defendants at the same time that the state’s bail laws were altered. The bail reform has needed to be reformed several times since. It is the same for discovery.
Gone for good is what was called the “blindfold law,” where lawyers for the accused had no knowledge of the district attorney’s case until immediately before trial. But the 2019 discovery changes are too unforgiving, so that if the notebook from the 10th cop on the scene of a crime isn’t turned over to the defense in time as were the notebooks for cops No. 1 to No. 9, the case is dismissed, even those those notes from Cop 10 didn’t say anything relevant.
Like bail, discovery reform needs a bit of reform.
For the seriously mentally ill, doctors and hospitals need to be given greater leeway to commit someone who, for instance, is camped in his own bodily waste in the subway or of the street or is barefoot and dressed in rags when the temperatures plummet below freezing. Such suffering individuals cannot care for themselves and need concerted medical and psychiatric care, even if the person’s illness makes him reject treatment.
The goal is not to punish anyone, but provide the help that such a person desperately needs.
The Legislature has had these proposals before them for months and failed to come to a resolution. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie are being forced to recall members from their spring vacation to return to the Capitol tomorrow to keep the state government open.
We are not sorry that their holiday break is being interrupted. In the real world, people don’t get to go on vacation while their main work is left unfinished. And passing a budget is the main work of the 63 senators and 150 members of the Assembly, who are the highest paid state legislators in the nation.
Their $142,000 annual salary beats out California, which pays $132,703, but in Sacramento there are strict, voter-approved term limits of a dozen years of service for a person’s lifetime. That covers both the state Senate and Assembly combined. We can only dream about something like that for Albany. This is Stewart-Cousins’ 19th year as a senator. Heastie is in his 25th year in the Assembly, more than twice what California permits.
During all of the long tenures of Stewart-Cousins and Heastie, the New York State Constitution has given the governor the upper hand in crafting the budget, which Legislature doesn’t like. Heastie complains that Hochul put policies like discovery and commitment of the seriously mentally ill in the budget, which the Constitution permits. But Stewart-Cousins recognizes reality and loads up the Senate’s budget proposals with all kinds of policy, so isn’t Heastie’s beef with his legislative counterpart?
