ALBANY — Democrats remain deadlocked on overhauling bail laws amid rising crime, but Gov. Kathy Hochul suggested Friday she is gaining ground despite resistance from the state Senate and Assembly to make it easier to jail people ahead of their trials.
“There have been very productive conversations in this room … Many meetings as recently as yesterday and regular conversations about how we meet our mutual objectives to protecting public safety,” Hochul said at the state Capitol as Democrats got ready to miss the April 1 deadline for a new state budget.
The governor is proposing changes that would effectively allow judges to jail people accused of bail-eligible crimes who they believe endanger public safety or get charged with other offenses.
Hochul claims her proposal would help judges confused about how criminal justice reforms passed in 2019 conflict with a requirement they impose the “least restrictive” conditions for criminal defendants – whether or not tweaks passed in 2020 and 2022 allowed bail.
“There is an inconsistency in our law right now. That’s what I’m striving to fix with respect to the ‘least restrictive’ means in particular,” she said.
Legal experts have argued her plan could effectively mean the end of New York’s longstanding law that limits judges to using bail as a way to ensure criminal defendants, who are officially innocent until proven guilty, show up to court.
The issue, along with her controversial housing plan, has held up budget talks on other issues, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) and state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) told reporters Thursday.
“We know that bail has really been defined everywhere. I mean people should know when bail is appropriate and when it isn’t. And so, no, I’m not interested in redefining bail,” Stewart-Cousins said.
The Yonkers powerbroker and Heastie have repeatedly noted that crime has risen nationwide, including in states that give judges much more leeway to jail people pretrial, while pushing back against efforts to undo current bail laws despite mounting criticism.
Heastie, whose chamber has floated a counter-proposal on tweaking bail laws, said “there’s always room for compromise” while emphasizing that outstanding differences on the two top issues have held up discussions on other matters.
“Nothing other than bail and the housing compact has gotten any real discussion,” he said Friday.
Hochul on Friday downplayed the level of conflict with the other two so-called “three people in a room” who ultimately negotiate the budget by pointing to low-level meetings among staff amid the ongoing stand-off with their bosses on bail and housing.
“There’s many levels of conversations around the budget when it’s the leaders and myself who’ve been very focused on making progress in these two areas,” the governor said.
“However, that does not mean that they’re not literally round-the-clock tables, as they call them, where the staff was getting together, talking about our climate initiatives, our education, health care, and certainly the finances are part of that,” she added.
However, Hochul faces a fight with progressives emboldened by the state Senate’s historic rejection of her nominee to lead New York’s highest court.
Hochul also has fewer moderate Democrats to lean on inside the Legislature following the 2022 election where Democrats suffered several big defeats in the New York City suburbs with Hochul at the top of the ticket in the closest gubernatorial election in a generation.
And if the Democratic supermajorities vote in lock-step, they could even overrule Hochul on a final spending plan.
State Senate Democrats have exactly the 42 members needed to override gubernatorial vetos in the 63-member chamber while the Assembly has a few extra Democratic votes to spare in such a situation.
But the governor has significant leverage in the budget process that includes the ability to keep state government running with temporary spending measures, which legislators cannot alter, while holding out on her fellow Democrats.
She has highlighted in recent weeks her 2022 success with securing changes to bail reform after holding up a final budget until 10 days past the April 1 deadline.
Public confidence in the criminal justice system is at stake, Hochul said Friday while pushing her plan to loosen restrictions on judges’ ability to lock up the people they deem dangerous.
“I’m looking forward to restoring people’s confidence in our system power part of that has to do with fixing some of the bail laws that I believe don’t give judges the clarity that they need to have,” she said.
“There is an inconsistency in our law right now. That’s what I’m striving to fix with respect to the ‘least-restrictive means’ in particular.”
Republican leaders told reporters Friday the embattled governor has to hold her ground in budget talks against progressives or else Albany Democrats will never substantially change state bail laws in the remaining months of the legislative session that ends in June.
“Democrats in the state Senate and Assembly aren’t going to do this in a standalone bill,” Assembly Speaker William Barclay (R-Fulton) said at a press conference. “So I don’t make it a habit of complimenting the governor, but I hope she sticks to her guns. Hopefully, she does put this piece of public policy in the center.”