New York budget once again to include bail reform rollbacks, no changes to discovery

ALBANY — Judges in New York could soon have greater discretion to set bail and hold defendants awaiting trial after Gov. Hochul secured changes in the yet-to-be-approved state budget.

The Democratic governor’s push to once again overhaul the state’s bail laws faced intense pushback from progressive members of her own party and others who say further rollbacks to reforms approved in 2019 limiting pretrial detention for most nonviolent offenses are unnecessary.

The $229 billion deal struck with legislative leaders, nearly a month past the state’s fiscal deadline, will remove a requirement that judges choose the “least restrictive” means to ensure defendants return to court.

“It gives judges discretion they need to hold violent criminals accountable, while still upholding our commitment to a justice system that is fair and accessible to all and also ensuring that poverty is never treated as a crime,” Hochul said while announcing a “conceptual” budget agreement on Thursday.

The Dem-run Legislature is slated to return to Albany on Monday to debate and vote on the budget bills, which have yet to be made available to the public.

Bail has been a political flashpoint in New York since the 2019 reforms, which have already been tweaked twice before, were implemented. Both Republicans and moderate Dems have blamed the reforms for spikes in violent crime despite little evidence backing their claims.

Assemblywoman Latrice Walker (D-Brooklyn), who has been on a hunger strike during the prolonged budget process to protest Hochul’s proposed bail changes, accused the governor of politicizing the issue.

“The elimination of the least restrictive means standard with respect to bail would result in more Black, brown and poor people being detained pretrial,” Walker said. “This would not make New Yorkers safer. It would fracture families and communities — and override legal precedent that dates back to the civil rights era.”

The governor has said repeatedly she supports the underlying premise of the reforms, ensuring people aren’t jailed simply for being poor, but wanted to address “inconsistencies” in the law.

Criminal justice advocates railed against the latest changes and called on lawmakers in the Senate and Assembly to reject the compromise.

Victor Pate, co-director of the #HALTsolitary Campaign, noted that at least 36 people have died in city jails over the past two years and called conditions at Rikers Island and other facilities an “ongoing deadly humanitarian crisis.”

“Now is a moment when New York’s political leaders should be doing everything in their power to release people and stop sending people to these deadly jails,” Pate said. “It is unconscionable for the state’s budget to do the opposite by weakening civil rights protections in the bail law to send more people to these hellholes that are a moral stain on our state.”

While an agreement was reached on bail, changes to the state’s evidence-sharing, or discovery, laws was left out despite an 11th hour push from prosecutors.

“This is something that the district attorneys had brought to our attention, asking for changes,” Hochul said Thursday. “We thought we had a plan that met the needs and the district attorneys decided that that was not the path.”

The governor said the final spending plan will include money for both prosecutors and defense attorneys, about $40 million each, to help cover the cost of keeping up with evidence sharing statutes.