The top lawmakers on the Assembly and state Senate health committees, in a letter Tuesday, urged against making changes to the state’s bail law, which ended cash bail requirements for misdemeanor and non-violent felony offenses.
In the letter, Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and Sen. Gustavo Rivera warned that making changes could lead to more people in jails, creating an increase risk for people to contract the coronavirus.
Today, the Manhattan Assembly delegation issued a report, NYCHA Crisis: Finding Tenant Solutions, that details the living conditions of several NYCHA developments across Manhattan, and urges New York State to commit substantial and consistent funding for NYCHA’s most urgent capital needs.
“Written prior to the COVID-19 State of Emergency, the pandemic further highlights that, for over 400,000 NYCHA tenants in substandard housing, the public housing crisis is a public health crisis,” said Assembly Member Richard N. Gottfried, the dean and Chair of the Manhattan Assembly Delegation. “New York State can act now with serious funding commitments and lead the way towards the restoration of NYCHA.”
“Everyone is pointing out that jails and prisons are a hotbed of spreading contagion,” said Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, chair of the Health Committee. “Our bail reform has [kept] more people out of that pot of bumbling contagion.“Coming in and out and infecting other inmates, infecting personnel, and when they come out, infecting their neighbors,” Gottfried said.
Gottfried and Senate Health Chair Gustavo Rivera sent a letter to every fellow lawmaker on Tuesday denouncing efforts to rollback bail reform during a health emergency.
Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan), the chairman of his chamber’s Health Committee, argued during a late-night floor debate on Monday that no past governor has ever asked for the powers Cuomo requested during any previous public health emergencies.
“The governor and health commissioner have, for decades, had extraordinarily broad executive powers,” he told the Daily News on Tuesday. “I’ve never heard a governor or health commissioner in any disaster or emergency say that there was something that needed to get done that couldn’t get done because of a lack of what this bill does.”
I represent Chelsea, Hell’s Kitchen, Midtown, and parts of Murray Hill and the Lincoln Center area in the State Assembly. I have been chair of the Assembly Health Committee since 1987. During off hours, I like to write Chinese calligraphy.
