December 13, 2025
Last week the NYS Council was published in the Albany Times Union with an OpEd we submitted discussing our campaign for a carve out of our services. The OpEd was picked up by the Empire Report, a daily publication people in NY government, and those participating in/ interested in NYS politics read each day, and also by City & State First Read also published the OpEd on its front page on Friday. Empire also ran the OpEd last weekend, all weekend with my picture next to it.
On Thursday SPECTRUM News (cable provider for all areas of NYS other than NYC) aired a story we recruited on its daily political show called Capitol Tonight with Susan Arbetter. That weeknight show is a must-watch for government leaders and anyone in NYS that is interested in state government/politics.
A better quality version (than the first link I sent on Thursday night) of the Capitol Tonight show is linked below. The story features comments from Assemblywoman JoAnn Simon, Allegra Schorr from COMPA and me. Also below is a written version of the story that SPECTRUM News published. It includes a letter from our colleagues at The Federation of Mental Health Services that we handed to the reporter during my hour long interview with her. We also provided letters from Families Together-NYS, COMPA, and the HealthyMinds, HealthyKids Campaign – the letters I have on hand based on a request I made to all campaign participating orgs when I asked them to write individual letters and send them to the Gov. last month – – to demonstrate (in a different way) broad support for this ask.
Recently the NYS Council had discussions with MHANYS< FOR-NY and Medicaid Matters NY and I am so pleased to report that all of them joined the Campaign and are now on our sign on letter that will be re-released next week. We now have 19 associations/coalitions on that letter.
Our request for a carve out is still very much alive with less than 30 days before the release of the governor’s executive budget proposal. What I can say is that there is a significant amount of time and resources being devoted to this discussion inside the government.
Please plan to attend our upcoming Zoom meeting with Senator Nathalia Fernandez on Tuesday, December 16 at 10:00 sharp. If you are an OASAS provider, please make attendance at this meeting a priority if possible. THANK YOU!
Join Zoom Meeting – Tuesday, 10-11
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87944828692?pwd=JhaiWr4uWWwSfuWfxaXSa0qWab365h.1
Meeting ID: 879 4482 8692
Passcode: 743570
Keep hope alive! The heat gets turned up next week.
Happy Saturday.
Lauri
SPECTRUM cable news story that ran on Capitol Tonight – running around the state: