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.
It’s unclear whether the Legislature or even the governor, who must approve the changes as part of the state budget, have the stomach to cut spending to medical facilities grappling with an expected wave of COVID-19 patients and a potential health catastrophe, as well as rolling back Medicaid services to patients.
“It’s never a good time to cut health care, especially when the only rationale is to fit into an artificial limit. It’s even more wrong in the midst of a growing epidemic,” said Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan).
“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.
“This is not the best time to be sending people door-to-door,” he said. “It’s the exact opposite of what we’re trying to do. I don’t know the specific solution, but I know it’s something we have to address.”
In the two days between those comments, grumbling from a handful of candidates has turned into a more widespread uproar.“[M]y campaign is immediately suspending efforts to collect further petition signatures for ballot access,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney announced.
“I’m working to make it easier for candidates to get on the ballot in districts affected by COVID-19, and I’m suspending my own efforts to gather signatures for my candidacy for re-election,” tweeted Assemblyman Dick Gottfried (D-Manhattan).
Democratic lawmakers in both houses of the state Legislature passed legislation last year that would regulate pharmacy benefit managers in New York for the first time. Independent pharmaciescheered. Insurers and manufacturers – who own some PBMs – not so much. Huge sums were at stake, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo ended up vetoing the bill last December. But the governor left the door open for lawmakers to send a new bill this year if it addressed five concerns he had in the original legislation. That could happen in the coming months, according to Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried, who sponsored the original bill.
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.”
“This bill would create a program of grants to help community groups and schools run blood drives,” Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-New York City and legislation sponsor wrote in his legislative justification. “When community organizations or schools conduct blood drives, the blood bank generally pays for the cost of the blood collection itself. But the blood banks do not pay for promotional activities such as mailings to an organization’s members, or the cost of the space if this cost exists.”
While Salazar settled into her new role in Albany, advocates and organizers looked for other decriminalization allies in the state Legislature. During an event celebrating the passage of the Gender Expression Non-Discrimination Act, which banned conversion therapy and discrimination based on gender identity, transgender community members approached Assemblyman Richard Gottfried. The activists primed Gottfried on the next priority in their agenda: the full decriminalization of sex work. “We think there needs to be a bill,” they told him, and they wanted him to help carry it. Would he do it? A member of the Assembly since 1971, Gottfried said he had “believed for decades” that the harms associated with sex work were “overwhelmingly the result of the illegality of it.” He said he would. Two of his colleagues in the Assembly, Dan Quart and Catalina Cruz, signed on as co-sponsors soon after.
(Albany, NY) State Senator Gustavo Rivera, Assembly Member Richard Gottfried, advocates, and health care provider associations gathered today to call on the Legislature to pass the “Beyond the Fourth Trimester” bill, S.7147-A/A.9156 which would extend postpartum coverage for mothers from 60 days to one year after giving birth. The bill recently passed both houses’ Health Committees and has the support of physicians, midwives, hospitals, and advocates for improving reproductive health and reducing health care racial disparities.
Assemblyman Richard Gottfried and state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, who lead the health committees in the state Legislature, both expressed disappointment that NYC Health + Hospitals, the city’s public hospitals system, was left out especially given that New York City is expected to be hit particularly hard under the governor’s proposal to shift Medicaid costs onto localities.
“As they say, ‘if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu,’” Gottried said in a statement. A week earlier, he and Rivera had criticized the governor and his administration for not providing updates about the selection for the team.
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.
