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The Social Value of Bail Reform


michael blake presser

Assemblymember Blake, one of the authors, at a recent rally


On January 1, as New York took a considerable step towards a more just and equitable criminal justice system, we heard the all-too-predictable objections to bail reform. Now, along with the chorus that tried to shout down reforms in the last legislative session, we hear some of those who supported these reforms wanting to undo a policy that takes seriously the rights of low-income New Yorkers and communities of color—because of a tragic incident in Monsey that has nothing to do with bail or reform.  

As a black state legislator who represents Latino, African, African-American, and white residents in a Bronx district whose citizens have long borne the brunt of inequitable and unjust bail policies, and as a Jewish nonprofit leader whose organization is headquartered in the same district and has worked in jails and prisons for decades, we are appalled that the bitter pain of racism and a resurgence of anti-Semitism are being used to divide us rather than bring us together.

Let’s look at the facts. The purpose of money bail is to ensure that defendants—people who are only accused of a crime and thus are legally presumed innocent—will appear in court. It is not meant to be a punishment or a fee. Yet for many people, it represents an insurmountable financial barrier to release that carries dire and life-altering consequences. We have many examples of individuals like Kalief Browder and thousands of others who were arrested and held not because they were a flight risk, but simply because they or their families could not afford bail. Kalief experienced such violence and torture while detained that he took his own life after release. Layleen Polanco never made it home and died while detained on $500 bail.

We cannot ignore the historic and systemic racism, sexism, and ageism at the root of many criminal justice policies, nor can we pretend that bail does not criminalize poverty and perpetuate injustice, and we must recognize that pretrial detention actually diminishes public safety.

Detention is more likely to cause crime than improve public safety. A report from the Arnold Foundation revealed that people detained for two or three days were almost 40 percent more likely to commit a crime before trial than those detained for less than 24 hours, and those held for more than a month were 74 percent more likely to be arrested for a new crime.

How could this be? After just a few days of detention, people may lose their jobs, miss rent payments, or have their children taken away. After a month, these consequences become even more pronounced and threaten community ties that are crucial to stability and wellbeing. To make matters worse, people who are detained awaiting trial are far more likely to accept plea agreements, even when innocent, because they want to go home — see the exonerated Central Park Five — or be convicted of a crime than similar defendants who are not subjected to conditions that damage their wellbeing. 

Contrary to the rhetoric of many critics, our reformed bail law does not encourage prosecutors or judges to let “dangerous people walk free.” New York has never permitted preventive detention based on a prediction of future “dangerousness.” Prosecutors and judges have long worked within a system that asked them to consider only whether a person was likely to return to court and provides many options to support people in returning to court that do not depend on financial capacity.

The truth is that most of the benefits of cash bail went to private insurance companies in the bail bond business, and that we are terrible at predicting future behavior. We should not allow the present fear-mongering to create more punitive and harmful bail and detention policies than those we reformed during the last legislative session in Albany.

We stand together for bail reform and all policies that address the underlying inequities and biases in our legal system. It is time to give bail reform a fair chance and not allow this thoughtfully-constructed law to be undone under the pretense of fighting anti-Semitism.

Yes, there is more to do. We must continue to implement programs that increase public safety while addressing inequity. New York City has been working to ensure that people who are released from court or jail are offered needed social services, an approach that should be supported by those who claim to be so concerned about releasing people who were previously being held for ransom they could not pay.

We look forward to a productive and progressive 2020 legislative session that builds on last session’s reforms and continues to shift New York towards a more just and equitable legal system.

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Assemblymember Michael Blake represents the 79th District in the Bronx. Elizabeth Gaynes is President and CEO of The Osborne Association. On Twitter @MrMikeBlake & @OsborneNY.

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Manufacturing is Alive and Well in New York City, But It Looks A Lot Different Than It Used To


created ferry yards

(photo via the Mayor's Office)


As the spring semester begins for New York’s high school and undergraduate students, many will soon shift their focus from studies to a career. Generations ago, the options were pretty straightforward for students without an advanced degree: build something or sell something. Today, the job market is quite different.

The information age has opened up all kinds of new opportunities for young people. At the same time, the traditional industrial or manufacturing job has changed as a result. Those who “build something” spend as much time typing up code as pounding out widgets.

Indeed, manufacturing has not left New York—it’s evolved and grown. Largely gone are the massive factory floors and smoke stacks. In their place, we now have clean rooms and miles of fiber optic cable. Are things still made in New York? Yes, lots of things. How they are made, however, looks more like the Jetsons than the Flintstones.

But education and training have not caught up to the new manufacturing age in New York, and now there is a skills – and, frankly, perception – gap when it comes to attracting new workers to growing industries that desperately need to fill well-paying jobs. These jobs include interesting careers in green manufacturing, marrying tech with manufacturing, and local projects related to smart city upgrades.

So how do we close the gap? Through education and training programs, and by actively engaging young people about the opportunities available to them in New York’s modern manufacturing sector.

For instance, here is how companies like ours – Quadlogic and Lee Spring – have adapted and are working to address these challenges.

Lee Spring has been manufacturing metal springs, wire forms and stampings in New York for more than a century. How Lee Spring makes its products has changed remarkably, however. Lee Spring used to physically make each part step-by-step, requiring a labor-intensive multi-step process using multiple machines.

Today, the company has developed automated systems that make the entire part in one step, are calibrated and controlled by technology-enabled factory teams, and monitored by a management team working away from the factory floor. This technology has allowed us to grow internationally, with facilities in six different countries, all overseen by our management team at computers in Brooklyn.

Quadlogic is a relatively new company, making smart meters for municipalities, including New York City. But Quadlogic doesn’t just build the meters here—it has developed a team of information workers who also help cities optimize use of the meters through the Internet of Things. Quadlogic is both a manufacturer and an information company.

And the efficiencies that technology created also allows for relatively modest energy use. There are no smoke stacks at our facilities. They have been replaced by highly-tuned quality-control systems that minimize our carbon footprint.

That’s what manufacturing in 2019 looks like in New York. And we have entry-level jobs available that can easily approach six-figures, even without a four-year college degree and the debt that comes with it. The average manufacturing and industrial sector wage in New York is $65,000. Yet we struggle to find applicants, nevermind good candidates—even though no manufacturing background is typically needed, and most training is on-the-job. Digital skills are a huge plus though.

For those young people interested in a manufacturing career in New York, there are also great programs to put you on a clear path to a good-paying job. High school students can take advantage of the Career Technical Education Industry Scholars Program, which places students with firms like ours. And ApprenticeNYC is a 10-week training program that teaches fundamentals that almost anyone in manufacturing needs to have—blueprints, measuring instruments, and safe workplace training. We have benefited greatly from these programs, often hiring students directly from them who have gone on to take important roles at our companies.

So, for students and others looking for a well-paying, interesting job in an innovative information-age field, there is no reason to leave New York for Silicon Valley. Technology has changed manufacturing in New York. We are not the past; we are the future. And our potential for growth and success is limited only by our innovation, imagination, and finding the next generation of New Yorkers looking to build things in the greatest city in the world.

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Thomas George is the Vice President of Technology at Quadlogic. Al Mangels is the President of Lee Spring Company and a member of the Executive Board of the NYC Manufacturing and Industrial Innovation Council (MaiiC).

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The Governor's Dilemma: Gimmicks or Gumption


exec budget address

(photo: Governor's Office)


Next week Governor Cuomo will unveil his proposed budget for the state fiscal year beginning April 1. In his November modification of the current year’s budget and financial plan there was a preview of the severity of the problem he faces: a significant deficit -- originally $6 billion, now reduced to $4 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends in only 12 weeks -- that is projected at $6.1 billion for next fiscal year and to grow to more than $9 million in 2023.

The governor has acknowledged the magnitude of the budget challenge and hinted that serious structural changes are needed, but it is far more likely his budget will contain a variety of short-term fixes and avoidance devices to close the gap. 

Much attention has been paid to the fact that state deferred $1.7 billion in Medicaid expenses from fiscal year 2019 to 2020 to address the recent dramatic increases in the program’s costs. The current deficit is being papered over by again rolling about $2 billion of expenses into the next fiscal year, as well as cutting Medicaid reimbursement rates across the board by 1% and achieving other unspecified savings.

But these fixes are by no means sufficient to handle the cumulative deficit over the next four years, estimated at $28 billion, the largest faced by this governor since early in his first term. 

The size of the deficit and the governor’s vague comments in two public appearances last week have created a high level of anticipation and anxiety about the impending budget proposal. The leader of the State Assembly, Carl Heastie, is talking about higher taxes on the wealthy; Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins has been less enthusiastic about more taxes but has not proposed an alternative.

After his January 6 speech to the Association for a Better New York in New York City, I asked the governor if he expects to raise taxes to deal with the deficit. His answer was an unequivocal “No.” He continued:

“We have equated politicians’ response, ‘well we have a problem, the answer is more money’ - no. There’s not necessarily a correlation between more money and better product...the answer isn’t always more money. It’s government’s answer...it’s a legislative answer because they don’t have executive control, so the simple answer is ‘we have to make education better, I’m spending more money’ — we’re already spending more money per pupil than any state in the United States of America, but you’re in the middle when it comes to performance, so the answer’s not always more money. And some of these situations are structurally problematic. We have a problem with Medicaid that is going up very high. A one-shot cash revenue is not the answer - fix the problem. Money tries to paper over the problem, and I’m not in the papering-over business...we’ve been able to say ‘We have reduced your taxes on the state level,’ and I want to continue to be able to say that. Money is not going to solve our Medicaid problem, the health costs have to be addressed structurally, and a one-shot dose for the system of sugar to give us a short high with revenue is not the answer.”

I couldn’t agree more! The audience cheered. But do we all mean the same thing when we talk about the need to address “structural problems”? Probably not.  

Two days after the ABNY speech the governor delivered his official State of the State Address in Albany. It contained many quintessential Cuomo elements, i.e. assertions that progressive government must be pragmatic and appeals to the can-do spirit of New Yorkers to build big. With respect to the deficit, he again made generic references to correcting “structural” problems that raised more questions than answers.

First, he was critical of the way state school aid is distributed, noting derisively that it is not progressive and that some districts spend more than $30,000 per student while others spend far less because they lack sufficient resources derived from property taxes. He repeated several times as if a mantra: “use state funds to raise those at the bottom.” The audience cheered; again, who could disagree? But how does the governor mean to rationalize school aid to make it truly progressive and save the state money? 

School aid is the second largest expenditure in the state budget, totaling $27 billion a year. It has grown 37% over the last decade. The reason it is so high is that everyone from the teachers unions to parents/voters to the State Education Department to every district’s legislative representatives wants more money for schools every year. A major issue in every budget negotiation is not how much more school aid is needed but rather, how much less than advocates demand is acceptable to the Legislature.  

Giving less — or at least no more — to the property- and income-rich districts and to those that have lost school population, and redirecting the savings to poorer districts that need state aid to have enough to provide the sound basic education promised to all students by the State Constitution would mean total school aid would need to rise by only $300 million, not the billions demanded by advocates, saving $800 million, maybe more, per year. It would be very surprising, if welcome, if this is what the governor proposes.

Second, at the very end of the State of the State Address the governor blamed the recent dramatic increase in Medicaid spending – the largest expense in the state budget, which has grown an average of 6.3% per year over the last four years – on the fact that the amount localities contribute to the program is capped and the state has borne all the increases in costs since the cap was imposed in 2015. He cited the amount this saves Erie County ($177 million), Westchester ($175 million) and New York City ($2 billion), wise-cracked “it is too easy to write a check when you don’t sign it” and stated that we need to pay for healthcare “‘intelligently and prudently.” If the local expense cap is the structural problem with Medicaid he means to fix, he is on the wrong track.

Medicaid spending is driven by state policy and health system practices, not by administrative costs at the county or New York City level. New York State has, and has been proud of, its relatively generous eligibility and benefit levels, which mean that there are a whopping 6 million New Yorkers on Medicaid — one of every three residents — and it is the state’s largest expenditure, costing $80 billion a year (half federally reimbursed), accounting for more than one of every three dollars in the state budget.

It is entirely appropriate to ask for more help from localities in curbing misuse and fraud in the program and the governor wisely announced that he will reconvene the Medicaid Redesign Task Force that was effective in achieving Medicaid savings in his first term (bring back Jason Helgerson!).

But there is no justification for pushing costs down to the localities which have even more limited sources of revenue than the state and already pay more of Medicaid costs than the rest of the localities in the country combined. Indeed, freezing the local share of Medicaid to the amount they paid in 2015 and taking full state responsibility for the operation and cost of the program is one of the most significant accomplishments of the Cuomo administration. The Legislature already rejected an effort to lift the cap on New York City’s share when the governor tried to do so in 2016.

One of the sources of the recent dramatic growth in the costs is the state’s directive to pay all home health aides and other Medicaid direct service providers a minimum wage of $15 an hour – immediately in the metro area and over time in the rest of the state — which added $1.5 billion to the budget in this fiscal year, growing to almost $2.3 billion additional in 2023. This may have been a good policy decision but it was not accompanied by commensurate systemic savings that would keep the growth in program spending manageable. Another is the fact that as the population ages, more and more people need long-term care, at home and in nursing homes. 

I know several people whose parents or relatives have transferred their resources to family members and taken other measures to qualify for Medicaid to pay for their long-term care, which is now responsible for almost half of the state’s total Medicaid costs. I am sure the same is true for some readers of this column. Indeed even presidential candidate Senator Amy Klobachar said in the debate this week that she expects her mom to go on Medicaid eventually.

Can we expect the governor to propose ways to cut down on the use of personal and long-term care or to tighten Medicaid eligibility requirements? This is no more likely than a structurally reformed school aid plan.

Why should a locality and those taxpayers who live there be financially punished because it happens to have a particularly large share of the state’s low-income population and hence its Medicaid enrollees? Is this progressive government? Why is it OK for state tax dollars to go to economic development efforts to shore up upstate economies that need it but not OK for state revenue to fund needy Medicaid recipients wherever they live in the state? That is not structural reform, but only shifting a serious and growing financial responsibility to another level of government.

So, get ready for a deficit reduction plan that includes cost shifts to New York City, to public authorities, and to capital spending, along with accounting gimmicks, optimistic savings estimates, and other tactics that avoid difficult decisions that would make some legislators and constituents unhappy. I hope I’m wrong.

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Carol Kellermann was president of Citizens Budget Commission from 2008 through 2018.

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