May 7, 2025
Budget bills continue to trickle out to the public. Apparently voting on the bills will begin today.
Linked, please find the just released SFY26 Health Article VII budget bill (S3007C – A3007C) in print. Also attached find information regarding the final Involuntary Commitment agreement in the budget.
We will analyze the content of the Article VII bill with an eye on our NYS Council budget priorities. Note: The Article VII bill (attached) tells us a great deal about the final budget agreement in areas including health and mental hygiene, however our analysis won’t be complete until we identify (in other bills) the appropriations that are necessary to fund any new / ongoing initiatives described in the Article VII language.
Below please find an article from Politico re: the Involuntary Commitment agreement, snippets of budget-related news from various news outlets, a brief update on federal budget reconciliation and Medicaid cuts, and an article from Crain’s regarding mayoral candidate Andrew Cuomo’s plans to address mental health issues facing New York City.
| —————— | ||||
| New York’s Involuntary Commitment Proposals | ||||
| By: Katelyn Cordero, Jason Beeferman, Maya Kaufman, Catherine Allen | 05/07/2025 05:00 AM EDT | ||||
|
||||
How We Got HereHochul, who is up for reelection next year, has framed her involuntary commitment proposal as a way to address crime in New York City’s subway system, as commuters continue to encounter mentally ill homeless riders and a drumbeat of headline-grabbing random attacks persists.
—————— (Syracuse.com, 5/7/25) A final state budget deal between Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers will include $450 million for a new emergency department and annex at Upstate University Hospital in Syracuse. If approved by the legislature, the money would fully fund the replacement of an outdated and overcrowded emergency room that serves a 14-county region in Upstate New York.
Matt Janiszewski, a spokesperson for Hochul, said the governor believes the modernized and expanded Syracuse hospital is crucial for the region’s future. “With Micron on the horizon, Central New York is poised for tremendous growth and SUNY Upstate must be ready to serve the tens of thousands of people that will call this region home,” Janiszewski said.
The SUNY Board of Trustees requested $450 million from the state in January to build a new emergency department, burn center and more operating rooms at University Hospital.
———————- (NY Post, 5/7) ALBANY – State lawmakers will finally begin voting on New York’s massive budget package Wednesday, but the public and even politicians themselves aren’t sure what the spending bills will say. Thousands of pages of text that make up the budget bill were scheduled to be released starting on Tuesday night, meaning the public and even rank-and-file lawmakers would only have hours to review the package before voting on it. Some sources are even casting doubt on the $254 billion figure that Gov. Kathy Hochul announced last week. “The senators have not seen a budget bill, we are told they are on their way, and we’re gonna begin voting this week, we haven’t seen one,” State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt (R-Niagara) said. “Let these bills age. Let us dig in. Let us know what we’re voting for for the people of New York,” Ortt added. —————————– Budget Reconciliation and Medicaid The Medicaid firefight continues: In a closed-door meeting late Tuesday, Speaker Mike Johnson and GOP leaders sought to assuage moderates’ fears about changes to the health safety-net program to help finance their party-line megabill. “We’re coming up with options — we’re discussing them, hashing through them, debating them,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told reporters afterwards. “They’ll come back with a revision.” Lawmakers coalesced around implementing work requirements and stricter eligibility checks — once every six months as opposed to annually — and cracking down on coverage for noncitizens. Notably, in post-meeting comments to reporters, Johnson appeared to rule out making major slashes to funding for states that have expanded Medicaid under the Democrats’ 2010 health law, backing away from some of the more controversial proposed cuts. “I feel better about it,” said one vulnerable House Republican who attended the meeting. But even if leaders are able to appease moderates, they risk also stoking a fire among conservatives itching to significantly overhaul Medicaid, including in the expansion states. Sparks flew nearly instantly, with Rep. Chip Roy hammering Johnson’s stance. “So — the GOP leadership position is to defend OBAMACARE policies…” Roy said in a post on X Tuesday night. The House Freedom Caucus also said in a post that not making major changes to the expansion program would be continuing to discriminate “against the people Medicaid is supposed to serve — pregnant women, the disabled, kids in poverty, etc.” House Energy and Commerce Republicans are scheduled to meet privately this morning — their second huddle this week — on how they plan to hit their $880 billion deficit reduction target in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” It’ll be a high-wire act for Johnson and GOP leaders to get both moderates and conservatives on board ahead of a markup targeted for next week, and key House GOP lawmakers are likely to head to the White House for meetings with Trump in the coming days as they attempt to finalize their game plan. “We have to make sure that we know where the president is on this and also where the Senate is,” Rep. Juan Ciscomani told reporters Tuesday. “We can’t be unilaterally moving this without knowing where they’re going to be and then have some surprises there at the end.” (Politico, 5/7/25) ————————- (Crain’s Health Pulse, 5/7/25) Cuomo’s mental health agenda calls for supportive housing and involuntary commitment Andrew Cuomo has released a plan to address what he calls the city’s “mental health crisis,” laying out a blueprint for a mayoralty that focuses on increasing residential services and psychiatric commitments if he’s elected in November. The mental health plan proposes coordinating government efforts to commit people living on the street while increasing the number of institutional beds for those coming from the criminal legal system, along with voluntary housing units with on-site services. The plan includes considering all people being discharged from a psychiatric hospitalization or Rikers Island for court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment and creating a cross-agency unit responsible for mobile outreach, data collection and case management for unsheltered people. Like other Democratic candidates, Cuomo – the frontrunner going into the June primary – is also calling for the expansion of an array of voluntary programs, like mental health clubhouses, which combine a social club environment with treatment services, and intensive mobile treatment services, which currently have a wait list of more than 1,000.
The plan would add another 600 supportive housing units each year and expand the city’s involuntary hospitalization and long-term treatment apparatus. Cuomo’s supportive housing proposal would use $2.6 billion from the city’s capital budget to fund the creation or preservation of the new units, which come with social services for chronically homeless individuals, for five years. The units would be on top of the city’s existing goal of adding 15,000 of supportive apartments by 2030. Cuomo’s proposal calls for involuntary removal and commitment laws to be “consistently enforced” using the state’s new standards, which Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders have signalled will be part of a state budget deal, despite Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrew Stewart-Cousins’ initial resistance to the policy in favor of expanding voluntary treatment options. He also said he will direct the city’s public hospital system, New York City Health + Hospitals, to open between 100 and 200 high-security psychiatric beds, known as forensic beds, for people coming from the city jail system. Under Cuomo’s plan, all people being released from a psychiatric hospitalization or Rikers Island would be required to be assessed for court-mandated treatment under a state law known as Kendra’s Law, which Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams have pushed to expand in recent years. The program has been criticized by civil liberties advocates who say the system is coercive and disproportionately ensnares Black and Latino residents. The announcement is similar to an ongoing push by Adams, who has called for a deeper reliance on involuntary police removals and psychiatric commitments and is seeking a second term as an independent. In January, Adams announced a $650 million infusion to fund 900 new low-barrier shelter beds, known as safe havens, for the most vulnerable street homeless New Yorkers. Last month, he said the city would put an additional $46 million toward 5,850 additional supportive housing units. Cuomo’s plan also mirrors a push from Hochul to expand the number of beds available for long-term psychiatric commitments and use new powers to arrest and hospitalize homeless people against their will. Hochul, who succeeded Cuomo as governor in 2021 after he resigned amid allegations that he sexually harassed multiple state employees during his time in office, has pushed for changes in the state budget to make it easier to commit people when they appear to be unable to meet basic needs of food, shelter and clothing. The state Office of Mental Health also added 125 beds to the state’s two-dozen long-term psychiatric centers in the first four months of 2025, the largest expansion of institutions in years and a reversal of a decades-long trend to shutter beds that continued under Cuomo when he was governor. Hochul announced plans to add an additional 100 forensic beds to state-run facilities in the city as part of the state budget, the final details of which have yet to be released. “Let these bills age. Let us dig in. Let us know what we’re voting for for the people of New York,” Ortt added. |
The push also comes as Democrats around the country have increasingly embraced civil commitments as a way to address the colliding crises of homelessness, mental illness and crime in their communities. California created a new pathway to court-ordered treatment several years ago, and Oregon officials are debating whether to broaden their own civil commitment law.
—