Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fiscal year budget, featuring bail changes, misses April 1 deadline

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Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $227 billion FY-24 budget has not met its set April 1 deadline. The April 1 deadline is when New York state’s fiscal year, the first where Hochul is serving as elected governor, begins.

The state legislature has so far failed to reach an agreement on passing the budget largely due to debate over Hochul’s proposed changes to state bail laws. Among Hochul’s other proposed budget plans, which she announced on Feb. 1, are funding allocations toward housing, gun law reform and healthcare.

Bail reform

Hochul’s bail reform plan, which would override precedent in New York bail law set in the 1970s, continues to draw harsh criticism and stop up negotiations with state lawmakers.

In last year’s FY-23 budget proposal, Hochul pushed to enable judges to assess danger to the public when setting bail for a defendant. After a period of contention which contributed to the seven-day-late budget agreement, Hochul’s criteria didn’t pass, but the final budget did incorporate a provision enabling judges to consider the level of harm the alleged crime in question caused. The final budget also increased the number of bail-eligible crimes, including repeat felonies and class A misdemeanors which involve harm to a person or property.

This year’s budget includes the same attempt to expand on the current “least restrictive” standard under which New York judges operate when making pre-trial determinations like setting bail. State legislators have declined to incorporate the new standard for consideration of danger posed, and Hochul has not made a concession on the reform plan.

The plan has also drawn backlash from legal experts, with over 100 professors from every law school in the state signing a letter released last week to reject the plan. Hochul has maintained that expanding bail considerations is integral to her efforts to bring down the state’s crime numbers.

Gun violence prevention

Also controversial and tied to Hochul’s focus on targeting crime are the budget’s gun legislation plans. In addition to her proposed changes to decision-making criteria, Hochul is pushing to expand bail eligibility for repeat offenders and for gun crimes.

The budget also outlines a plan to implement a Supervision Against Violent Engagement plan in four upstate New York cities, including Syracuse. Under the program, people under parole supervision who are determined to be a likely reoffender would be placed under higher levels of supervision and on electronic monitoring.

The plan would also implement a full-time senior parole officer to gather intelligence at the local level in Gun Involved Violence Elimination jurisdictions — which are counties that receive state funding support for local law enforcement due to high crime rates — and a full-time, senior investigator to gather cross-jurisdictional information in jurisdictions of State Police’s gun violence task force.

The budget proposes directing $491.9 million toward gun violence remediation and prevention.

Stephanie Zaso | Digital Design Director

Mental health infrastructure

Hochul’s proposal outlines a $1 billion investment in state mental healthcare resources. The plan primarily allocates funding to expand and improve state mental healthcare facilities. It also details investments in mental health resources for schools, including Hochul’s plans to introduce legislation requiring private insurance companies to cover school-provided mental healthcare at rates equal to Medicaid’s.

Hochul has said her planned mental health investments will help address drug addictions, specifically fentanyl. As of October 2022, there have been 56 deaths from opioid overdoses in Onondaga County. There were a total of 4,766 opioid overdose deaths in the state in 2021, according to a report from the New York State Department of Health.

Housing availability and expansion

The proposed budget includes the creation of the New York State Housing Compact, which aims to build 800,000 new homes across the state over the next ten years. It also allocates $250 million to improving existing local infrastructure.

In March, Hochul held a roundtable meeting with central New York leaders to discuss the construction of new, affordable housing for the region in anticipation of the new Micron microchip facility in Clay, which is projected to bring 50,000 jobs to the surrounding community.

The plan to build more housing goes along with Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh’s Resurgent Neighborhoods Initiative, which aims to build 50 single-family and 75 multi-family houses. Seven houses were completed and nine were under construction as of May 2022.

Other current projects in Syracuse related to housing and infrastructure include the city’s application to receive state funding through the Restore New York Communities Initiative that would go towards rehabilitating — or demolishing and reconstructing — commercial and residential buildings across the city.

New York state granted Syracuse $500,000 of federal funding through the separate Restore Communities program in February, which is dedicated to connecting the Southside neighborhood to downtown Syracuse.

Last year, Hochul’s budget passed on April 7. The state legislature passed the $212 billion FY-2022 budget on April 7, 2021.