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CUNY Funding a Key Issue in State and City Budget Negotiations


 

Gov. Hochul speaks at LaGuardia Community College CUNY (photo: @CUNY)


Funding for the City University of New York, CUNY, is among a number of major focus issues as elected officials negotiate a new state budget this month and a new city budget by July.

Lawmakers, students, faculty, and others are concerned about proposals in both Governor Kathy Hochul’s and Mayor Eric Adams’ budget proposals, which are now the source of negotiations with their respective legislatures. Though Hochul included a modest increase in overall funding for CUNY in her January executive budget, she also proposed tuition increases that have been widely criticized. Adams, meanwhile, has offered cuts in city funding for CUNY, some of which have already gone into effect, with others proposed for next fiscal year.

On Thursday, CUNY students, faculty and elected officials rallied outside the governor's New York City office to demand substantial increases in funding for CUNY and to push back against any tuition hikes. 

CUNY is funded by all three levels of government and its own tuition revenue, among other funding streams like alumni, corporate, and philanthropic giving. The new state budget, expected this month after the April 1 start of the new state fiscal year has already been missed, will then impact the city budget passed in June — and both will go a long way in determining CUNY’s budget and future.

Many stakeholders, including students, faculty, and members of the State Legislature and the New York City Council, have pushed back against the proposed cuts and tuition increases, while seeking to significantly increase funding for CUNY in the upcoming state and city budgets. In a formal response to Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget, the City Council recently called on the administration to “restore and baseline $36.9 million in programmatic initiatives and cuts” to CUNY funding.

Over 271,000 students are enrolled across CUNY’s 25 colleges. Enrollment has decreased university-wide, though mostly at the community colleges, dropping more than 10% during the pandemic, though there has been some recent rebound. At community colleges, one metric shows a roughly 30% decline in enrollment since 2018. The CUNY Reconnect program, in part spearheaded and funded by the New York City Council, has shown cause for optimism, re-enrolling over 16,000 students in the 2022-23 academic year (6,000 more than projected) as it brings former CUNY students back into the fold — progress some say is at risk amid consideration of tuition increases and budget cuts.

CUNY senior colleges’ operating budgets are funded up to 60% by New York State, with capital budgets covered 100% by the State. Meanwhile, CUNY community colleges are largely funded via the New York City budget, which covers approximately 47% of all those costs – meaning almost all capital expenses and about one-third of all operating costs. The remaining community college expenses are covered by tuition and funding from the state.

In recent months, CUNY leaders have testified at state and city legislative budget hearings, alternately arguing against budget cuts, in support of modest tuition increases, and that CUNY can make do with what it is being given by state and city leaders, generally speaking, even if some programming is harmed. At the same time, CUNY faculty, staff, and students as well as their allies in government and beyond have testified and lobbied to increase investments in the university system, which largely educates lower- and middle-income students from the five boroughs and is a proven source of socioeconomic mobility.

At a March New York City Council higher education committee hearing on the mayor’s preliminary budget plan for next fiscal year, CUNY Chief Operating Officer Héctor Batista underscored the value of a robust CUNY for New York. Not only does CUNY graduate approximately half of all nurses in the city — about 1,800 per year — but it provides degrees for about one-third of all new teachers in New York City public schools. And, Batista told the City Council, “More than 80% of CUNY graduates stay in New York and contribute to the city’s economic, civic, and cultural life.”

The New York State Budget
Hochul’s $227 billion executive budget, released February 1, included $5.7 billion in appropriations for CUNY, including $1.92 billion in state assistance for operating funds, $3.15 billion from various funding sources (federal aid, grants and scholarships, tuition, and fees) and $643 million in new capital funding (in addition to $3.44 billion reappropriated for capital projects).

At the state legislative higher education hearing on the governor’s executive budget proposal later that month, CUNY Chancellor Felix Matos Rodríguez testified that Hochul’s proposal for CUNY includes $642.7 million in new funding for the capital budget and $94 million more in operating funds than the current fiscal year. Hochul’s proposed CUNY funding includes $119.7 million for community colleges, according to that testimony. The chancellor also defended the proposed tuition increase.

In mid-March, the two houses of the Legislature passed their one-house budget resolutions, which helped set the stage for final negotiations on a new spending plan, which are ongoing as the new fiscal year already began on April 1 (state leaders have passed 'extenders' to pay the state's bills).

The State Assembly proposed investing $1.1 billion in new capital funding for CUNY, compared to the governor’s $643 million proposal, and $246 million more in operating funds than the governor’s proposal, for a total of $2.17 billion, while also rejecting any tuition increases. The Assembly also proposed setting aside $470 million for an endowment matching fund and proposed increasing state funding for CUNY community colleges by 4%, an $8 million increase.

“This spending plan ensures that New York State’s higher education system remains affordable, competitive, and a national and international pinnacle of postsecondary education,” said Assemblymember Patricia Fahy, chair of the Assembly higher education committee, in a statement. 

The Senate’s budget not only rejected tuition hikes, but proposed $149 million in additional operating aid to CUNY over Hochul’s proposal and tweaked the $643 million capital increase proposal by instead recommending a restoration of $435 million in flexible capital funding, among other smaller capital investments.

The New York City Budget
Mayor Adams’ preliminary budget for CUNY for the city’s 2024 fiscal year, which begins July 1, is $1.27 billion — a $168.5 million cut compared with the budget adopted in June 2022 for the current fiscal year, according to City Council budget documentation. Virtually the entire decrease is focused at CUNY community colleges, which the city is primarily charged with funding, and where there have been significant enrollment drops.

And that’s on top of the $13.7 million cut in city funds for CUNY that the mayor made in the middle of the current fiscal year and is already being felt at the schools.

The city’s capital commitment plan for CUNY is about $412.4 million across fiscal years  2023-2027, including about $98.9 million for next fiscal year (FY 2024) — a number likely to increase, as unspent capital funds from the current year are rolled forward.

While the mayor has promised that his budget would not allow cuts to affect “pedagogical,” or student-facing, jobs, at the City Council higher education committee preliminary budget hearing, members’ questioning of CUNY executives revealed that this simply would not be the case.

“It’s impossible to absorb a $170 million cut at the community college level without affecting instruction. We will do our absolute level best to meet the needs of our students, but there is no question that there will be an impact,” said CUNY Provost Wendy Hensel, clarifying for the Council that student-facing jobs will be cut. “There’s no doubt that money matters in terms of recruiting [professors],” Hensel added, pointing out that CUNY will struggle to remain competitive if the salaries they provide are stagnant.

Of many CUNY programs on the chopping block, two are particularly harmful to students and even the university’s bottom line. One, CUNY’s Accelerate, Complete, and Engage (ACE) program, is “designed to help students complete their academic journey to the bachelor’s degree on time,” according to CUNY’s website. It is based on another program, the award-winning Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), which also aligns services, in this case to help students earn their associate’s degrees, mostly at CUNY community colleges.

When probed for statistics at the Council hearing, Hensel said that ASAP actually saves the university $6,500 per student, compared with students not in the program, based on its record of graduating students in under four years. With large numbers of CUNY students participating in ASAP, the program generates an estimated $80 million per year in savings. It has already been designated to be cut next fall. City Council Member Eric Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat who chairs the Council’s higher education committee, responded by saying that CUNY had presented “not the wisest investment choices in this budget.”

Another successful program set to lose funding is CUNY Reconnect, which costs $4.4 million annually, but generates roughly $80 million in tuition funds in the same time period. Spearheaded by New York City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and CUNY Chancellor Matos Rodriguez, the program assists people who have previously left CUNY to re-enroll. It initially had the target of re-enrolling 10,000 students for this academic year but far exceeded that goal, and enrolled over 16,600 students as of this current semester.

Until the state and then city budgets are passed in the coming weeks and months, funding for CUNY and specifically its seven community colleges remain in the balance.

While capital projects at senior CUNY colleges are fully funded by the State, community colleges require 50% of funds to be matched by local entities.

Bátista of CUNY told the City Council that CUNY is requesting $745 million in capital support, to be provided by the city and state in total – roughly equivalent to the $742 million appropriated between the city and state for fiscal year 2024. Dinowitz pointed out that the need for this support has been evident, citing that Bronx Community College was forced to move courses online after weeks without heat late last Fall.

Dinowitz further addressed the need for ADA compliance as part of capital improvements, calling the addition of ramps and elevators not simply discretionary, but vital — and indeed legally required – for providing access to education. Bátista agreed that ADA compliance is necessary, but added that “our need is tremendous” and that at the moment CUNY is doing all it can to simply “triage” current infrastructure issues. “The money that we get does not really cover all the challenges we have at the university,” he said.

Professional Staff Congress (PSC) of CUNY President James Davis, whose union includes roughly 30,000 CUNY faculty and staff members, testified further about the contributions CUNY makes to the city in economic and cultural impact, and the impossibility for the university and PSC members to thrive without more investment.

“We urge the Council to understand CUNY for what it is, a beacon of hope for working-class New Yorkers and an unparalleled driver of social and economic mobility,” Davis said in his testimony to the City Council, in which he outlined the need for an additional $35.5 million to hire 264 full-time academic advisors along with $11 million to train mental health advisors.

PSC-CUNY, which is now beginning to negotiate a new contract with CUNY after its prior one expired in February, has since made a statement commending the proposed budgets from the Senate and Assembly. With sights set on passing the New Deal for CUNY legislation, that would, among other things, make tuition free, Davis said, “The Legislature’s opposition to tuition hikes and the investments they have prioritized can bring us closer to realizing a New Deal for CUNY while protecting students and staff from painful cuts to academic programs and student services threatened by pandemic enrollment declines and the expiration of federal stimulus.”

In a brief interview, Davis told Gotham Gazette that it is time for a serious shift in how government funds CUNY. “Every year, we’re [testifying] in Albany, and at City Hall, because we're in the public sector. And we just can't afford to stay on the sideline. There’s been a decade or more of caps and flat budgets for the university, and it winds up really affecting our members and the students that we serve.”

***
by Talia Barrington, Gotham Gazette

Read more by this writer.

Samar Khurshid contributed to this story.

Note - this article has been updated. 

'It's Incumbent on the State To Do This': Lawmakers ‘Optimistic’ Housing Access Vouchers will be in Budget Deal


A place to call home (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


As Governor Kathy Hochul tries to convince the Legislature to support her ambitious housing agenda focused on increasing the supply of homes, legislators seem unwilling to do so without including in a state budget deal major protections for current tenants including a new rental voucher program.

The Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) would provide state-funded rental subsidy vouchers to those experiencing homelessness or facing evictions and at risk of homelessness, regardless of immigration status. The bill is sponsored by State Senator Brian Kavanagh and Assemblymember Linda Rosenthal, two Manhattan Democrats who chair their chambers’ respective housing committees.

“It's just a natural fit with all the other programs and solutions and ideas around housing,” Rosenthal said in a phone interview. “It's just a no-brainer, because you know what? There weren't this many homeless people 20 years ago. It just keeps increasing and we don't have solutions.”

In January, the bill was passed by the Senate housing committee, followed by its approval in the Assembly housing committee in February. Then, just as they did last year, both legislative chambers allocated $250 million for the statewide program in their one-house budget resolutions passed in March. But the push for its inclusion in the budget this year appears to be more concerted.

Last year, Hochul opposed the inclusion of HAVP in the budget because of its price tag, though New York Focus reported that her office’s cost projections were massively inflated at $6 billion annually and the Legislature insisted it was ready to start at the $250 million allocation.

Hochul has continued to express concerns about the costs of the program. “My position is that I want to relook at the numbers and see what the numbers would look like today in terms of the cost,” Hochul said in March, according to Gothamist. “But you’re basically suggesting that we establish a state version of the federal Section 8 program, which we know it’s a very expensive program to run.”

However, the HAVP bill also does not provide for unlimited funding for all who might qualify. Modeled after the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, it caps a tenant’s rent burden at 30% of their income and only funds as many rental vouchers as the state allocates funding for each year. At $250 million, it would create about 20,320 vouchers, according to estimates from the Housing Justice for All advocacy coalition. For comparison, New York City alone had 73,868 individuals in homeless shelters on April 11, according to the Department of Homeless Services daily census. That included 45,750 individuals from 14,079 families.

This year, Hochul is seeking the Legislature’s approval for her proposed “Housing Compact,” aimed at building an estimated 800,000 new homes statewide over the next decade using a combination of regional housing growth mandates (with enforcement mechanisms), increased development around transit hubs, zoning and environmental review reforms, tax incentives, and more. Housing and changes to bail laws are the main issues initially being negotiated as the state budget deadline has been pushed to at least April 17, well past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year, using extenders to ensure state bills are paid.

“Governor Hochul's Executive Budget makes transformative investments to make New York more affordable, more livable and safer, and she continues to work with the legislature to deliver a final budget that meets the needs of all New Yorkers,” said Justin Henry, a spokesperson for Hochul, when asked for comment about the governor’s position on the HAVP.

The Senate and Assembly both rejected the idea of mandated housing growth targets in their one-house budgets, offering financial incentives to localities that voluntarily meet those goals. But they have also insisted that the governor's plan must be accompanied with short-term measures like HAVP and the “good cause eviction” bill which would protect tenants against significant rent raises and expand protections against evictions.

“There's a lot of elements that [Governor Hochul] had included in her goal and I think our one-house [budget resolution] has demonstrated that we had things that we would also want to have a conversation about as it relates to housing,” Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins told reporters on Tuesday in Albany. “We know that tenant protection is as important as building new units and we also know that affordability is an issue everywhere. So it is a very broad conversation.”

Spokespeople for Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie did not respond to inquiries about the status of HAVP in budget negotiations.

HAVP has broad support not just from Democratic lawmakers who have supermajorities in both legislative chambers and housing and homeless advocates, but also from the real estate industry and the landlord lobby, two sides that more often than not find themselves at cross purposes over housing policy.

“Direct rental assistance is a proven cost-effective method of ensuring people can stay in their homes and access new ones if so preferred,” the Real Estate Board of New York said in testimony submitted at a March 1 joint legislative hearing on housing. “Enabling additional and more effective use of rental assistance, especially in high-amenity areas, will expand housing choice for New Yorkers across neighborhoods.” REBNY is among many groups supportive of HAVP and Hochul’s housing plan.

In interviews, State Senator Kavanagh and Assemblymember Rosenthal seemed optimistic that HAVP would be included in the state budget, emphasizing that it is imperative to any comprehensive housing policy agenda.

“I think it's fair to say that HAVP is still a very strong priority for the Senate,” Kavanagh said, declining to disclose specific details from the internal budget negotiations.

He said he was “optimistic” that the budget would include some form of HAVP, given the amount of support behind the proposal. “I think everybody understands that developing housing over the long-term is not going to address the immediate crisis that many people are experiencing now,” he added. “Putting rental assistance on the table is a really important part of addressing the homelessness crisis, the eviction crisis, and just the crisis of rent poverty that people are dealing with where they're just paying way too much of the rent and their housing stability is threatened as a result.”

Kavanagh first introduced the bill in February 2020, before the pandemic made it even more necessary to provide stability to tenants in New York. “HAVP was viewed as a sort-of new and ambitious idea then, but over the last three years, it has become almost universally popular at this point,” he said.

After the pandemic era eviction moratorium was lifted, an eviction crisis has again developed, with nearly 160,000 active eviction cases statewide in housing court as of April 2, according to the Eviction Crisis Monitor created by the Right to Counsel NYC coalition.

“You can't just keep kicking it down the road because basically you're kicking people down the road…I think it's incumbent on the state to do this,” Rosenthal said of HAVP, in a phone interview.

The Assemblymember stressed the broader ramifications of ensuring that people can remain in housing while also providing a lifeline to those suffering homelessness. “It will house people, first of all,” she said. “And, by having greater housing stability for people – for those who only care about economics – there will be less spending on hospital stays and housing court and prisons and shelters because people will actually have a place to call their own.”

Pushing back against the governor’s concerns about costs, Rosenthal noted that the state can regulate its costs by assessing both the need for rental vouchers as well as the state’s fiscal ability to pay for them, just as the federal government does for Section 8.

Rosenthal also reiterated her chief criticism of the governor’s housing plan, that it doesn’t address the immediate housing crisis, unlike HAVP. “There's no solution to today's burning issue, which is we need to help people pay the rent,” she said.

RuthAnne Visnauskas, who helped craft the Housing Compact as Hochul’s state housing commissioner, said in a March 30 appearance on Gotham Gazette’s Max Politics podcast that HAVP and other tenant protections were still under consideration in the budget amid negotiations over Hochul’s housing agenda, which she helped craft. “Everything is still on the table,” she said, in response to a question about the Legislature’s focus on HAVP and other tenant protections. “So I would imagine that those things will stay in the conversation until the end…Nothing comes out the way it goes in. So I think, it’s still to be determined where we end up on all these pieces.”

As housing advocates have noted, the governor's plan also does not come with affordability requirements for the new housing that will be created across the state, though she argues that more abundant housing supply will be part of the affordability solution and that the Housing Compact is a complement to her five-year, $25 billion affordable housing plan passed in last year’s budget.

“HAVP is a critical investment in addressing housing insecurity in our State,” said Cea Weaver, campaign coordinator for the Housing Justice for All coalition. “As Governor Hochul pushes for a new Housing Compact, we have to keep in mind that without HAVP, nothing will guarantee that new housing will be affordable to tenants and homeless New Yorkers.”

***
by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Hochul, Legislators Look to Pass Holistic Criminal Justice Improvements


 

(photo: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul)


While another potential rollback of bail reforms has taken center stage in state budget negotiations for the second straight year, the fates of a swath of other criminal justice programs are being quietly hashed out.

Governor Kathy Hochul and state legislative leaders are in the midst of pinning down the contours of a roughly $230 billion state budget, already past the April 1 start of the new fiscal year. Even with the focus on bail, all parties are talking about a holistic suite of criminal justice-related policies with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake.

On everything from funding for prosecutors and public defenders to alternatives to incarceration and pretrial services, there is both major daylight and points of accord between the governor's executive budget plan and the State Senate’s and Assembly's one-house budget resolutions.

The main sticking point in the budget negotiations has been Hochul's emphasis on removing a bail standard that requires judges to consider the "least restrictive" means of securing a defendant's return to court. The governor is also focused on funding for law enforcement, district attorneys, and gun violence prevention. The Legislature, on the other hand, has raised the stakes for criminal legal services, especially funding for public defenders, while backing many of the violence and drug reduction spending programs in Hochul's plan. Other long sought reforms, like the Clean Slate Act, elder parole, and protections for juvenile interrogees, however, appear to be off the table, according to reporting from The City.

"New Yorkers are concerned about public safety, the rising cost of housing, and ensuring high-quality schools for all our kids, and any budget deal must make progress on these core issues," Hochul said in a statement last week as she announced a budget extension until April 10. "I have been negotiating in good faith with the legislature, but it is clear there is more work to be done before we reach an agreement." The governor and Legislature are expected to pass another budget extender on Monday to fund state government operations until April 17. 

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told reporters last week that "bail is now taking up pretty much all the oxygen and everything else is second." Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, each commanding Democratic supermajorities, have made it clear they are opposed to further changes to the bail reforms of 2019, which removed cash bail for most nonviolent felonies and has been adjusted every legislative session since its enactment.

"We want to help to clarify the judicial discretion as well as keep the integrity of our bail law," Stewart-Cousins said at a press availability in the Capitol on March 30, a day before the budget deadline. "So again, it's a productive conversation and I have every feeling that we can get to a good end."

Both chambers passed their own-one house budgets in which they outlined various lines of funding to support criminal justice and public safety programs, including the implementation of bail and other recent reforms. Among them are funding to implement changes to discovery laws, also passed in 2019, that were intended to open up the sharing of evidence between prosecutors and criminal defense attorneys. Both Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have said additional funding is needed to support lawyers struggling to comply with the new more stringent discovery requirements and reduce a growing court backlog.

Albany leaders have also yet to settle how much will be included for so-called alternatives to incarceration, a growing menu of diversion programs that often include social services for people convicted of a crime. Questions remain about how funding will be distributed for pretrial services, another type of diversion programs, this one for defendants to avoid jail before a conviction. The programs have expanded around the state in the wake of the 2019 bail reforms as a cashless alternative to bail.

The governor's budget includes hundreds of millions of dollars for local law enforcement agencies and district attorney's offices. In total, the executive budget projects spending $8.1 billion, or 3.5% of the total budget, on public safety agencies in the new fiscal year. That money will go to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Division of Criminal Justice Services, the state police, Division of Homeland Security, Indigent Legal Services, and Division of Military and Naval Affairs.

Also at stake is roughly a third of a billion dollars included in the executive budget for gun violence prevention and intervention initiatives. According to the Division of the Budget, that money represents a $110 million increase from last year, much of it going to local police departments, prosecutors, and law enforcement task forces. The governor's office did not provide a list that accounted for the full $337 million. At least some of that funding, including gun violence interrupter programs known as SNUG Street Outreach, was included in the Senate and Assembly proposals.

Funding for Prosecutors, Public Defenders
In 2020, a new state discovery law took effect that required prosecutors to automatically turn over evidence within tighter timeframes to defenders, part of a series of criminal justice reforms that included the elimination of cash bail for most nonviolent crimes. The new demands placed on lawyers come amid excessive court delays and a rise in city and statewide jail populations, as defendants await trial. Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have blamed the reforms for a growing backlog of cases in criminal court, which they claim has contributed to spikes in recidivism and violent crime.

"Our prosecutors need help as they've been underfunded for a long time, so we're proposing to help them play their role in the process by increasing funding from $12 million to $52 million and increasing coordination among all law enforcement agencies," Hochul said at a March 22 press briefing in the State Capitol.

In testimony before a joint legislative budget hearing in February, Mayor Adams acknowledged that the city's district attorneys and public defenders "are overwhelmed and need our help immediately." "The state must make a major investment in them now or risk depriving defendants of their constitutional right to a speedy trial — delaying justice for victims and continuing the unprecedented level of attrition within each of these offices," he said.

Hochuls executive budget includes $40 million to help prosecutors outside of New York City meet more stringent discovery rules, on top of $52 million in “aid to prosecution,” up from $12.5 million, for district attorney offices statewide. The discovery funding would help DAs hire staff and purchase the technology needed to store and process evidence, money they argue is desperately needed.

Much of the new “aid to prosecution funding” is to hire hundreds of prosecutors to help "develop crime strategy plans and reduce case backlogs," according to the governor's budget book. The allocation comes on top of funding from counties and federal grants; New York City pays hundreds of millions of dollars more for its five DAs.

Publicly funded defense attorneys have argued they too need funding to keep up with the new, much-needed influx of evidence.

"We have a lot of the same costs and the same impacts," said Lisa Schreibersdorf, executive director of Brooklyn Defenders Services. "We need to get the technology up to speed, we have to collect all that same evidence, we have to store it, organize it, sort it, share it."

Public defenders, who provide legal representation to the state's poorest residents, have seen an exodus of employees drawn to firms with lighter caseloads and better pay. The strain means fewer lawyers available to clients, who are predominantly Black, Latino, and immigrant New Yorkers.

The Senate one-house budget includes $50 million for prosecutors to comply with the new discovery rules, $10 million more than Hochul's allocation. It also gives $40 million to public defenders for the same purpose and another $47 million for other “Aid to Defense” funding for public defender organizations, for a total of $87 million – something left almost completely out of the governor's proposal (the governor included $7.6 million to the state's “Aid to Defense” fund and nothing to public defenders for discovery).

"When the governor…didn't put anything at all for the defenders, it was very disheartening," Schreibersdorf said.

The Assembly's one-house budget goes even further, raising discovery funding for prosecutors to $100 million (half to New York City's five DAs and half to the rest of the state). And it matched that funding, $100 million, to criminal defenders. The Assembly budget also includes another $40 million for the Aid to Defense fund.

The executive budget fell short in funding requested by the state Office of Indigent Legal Services to represent parents in family court, including when custody of a child is at stake. Hochul included $359 million for ILS, the same level as last year, and $23 million short of ILS's budget request this year. 


[Read: As Prosecutors Get Budget Boost, Public Defenders Seek More Funding Too]

Alternatives to Incarceration and Pretrial Services
The executive budget includes nearly $32 million for alternatives to incarceration (ATI) – a range of community supervision, treatment, and employment-oriented programs available to some defendants in lieu of prison. The allocation doubles the $15.7 million that was included in the budget adopted last year (in total, the Department of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) awarded more than $17 million last fiscal year).

Hochul also proposed $11.5 million for reentry services, including $7.7 million in new funding.

"It demonstrates New York's leadership in this area and this increased funding, we know, is certainly long overdue," said Andre Ward, associate vice president for public policy at the Fortune Society, a service provider for justice-involved and formerly incarcerated individuals. He was referring specifically to the governor's boost in ATI funding.

"Especially important, as we see more people with serious mental illness, there needs to be increased funding for more clinical and peer services," he said, which would be supported by the new allocations.

On ATI, the executive and Assembly one-house budgets are nearly identical, allocating roughly $32 million, with the minor exception of an Assembly carveout of $300,000 in federal Justice Assistance Grants (JAG), which can be used for a swath of law enforcement purposes, including ATI and re-entry services. Hochul's JAG proposal of $6 million is still $1 million less than previous years, according to the Senate's resolution, which restores that funding. The Senate also included an additional $2.7 million in legislative grants for "community safety and restorative justice," which similarly includes ATI and re-entry services.

Some state legislators and advocates had their hopes dashed when the executive and one-house budgets left out the Treatment Not Jails Act, which would expand mental health treatment courts statewide. Every county would be required to open diversion courts that offer social services and supervision in place of prison-time for people with severe mental illness and a growing list of special needs. Over a third of each chamber has signed onto the bill, sponsored by State Senator Jessica Ramos and Assemblymember Phara Souffrant Forrest, both Democrats. Pieces of the measure may still make it into the final budget agreement and lawmakers are eying the rest of the legislative session to try to get it across the finish line.

The executive budget also includes $20 million for pretrial services, a nonmonetary alternative to jail that was included in the bail reforms passed in 2019. Under the program, defendants may participate in various levels of community supervision by designated pretrial services agencies in order to ensure they return to court. New York City has been piloting a form of pretrial services, known as supervised release, since 2016, using nonprofit providers that often make referrals to other social services.  Many counties throughout the state lacked the same experience and infrastructure, relying instead on local probation departments to deliver the services, which some defenders fear may be less independent of prosecutors than private providers.

A portion of the governor’s $40 million allocation to prosecutors for discovery reform implementation may also be used for pretrial services.

The Assembly and Senate resolutions both meet the executive budget request of $20 million for pretrial services. The Assembly also included an additional $5 million for grants from the legislature for pretrial and legal services.

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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