NY Assembly scrambles to meet before end of month to wrap up 2023 session
ALBANY — Hoping to take care of some unfinished business, Assembly Democrats are planning to return to work before the end of the month after the state Senate wrapped up early Saturday.
The outstanding legislative to-do list includes proposals to make it easier to challenge criminal convictions and allow Gov. Kathy Hochul to unilaterally hash out a deal with the Seneca Nation on its expiring gaming compact.
A return to Albany also represents a second chance for divisive bills that divided the Assembly Democratic supermajority in the final weeks of the scheduled legislative session despite passing the state Senate with relative ease.
“I believe it is time to pass the bill in the Assembly,” Assemblywoman Jessica González-Rojas (D-Queens) said of her bill to provide low-cost health insurance to illegal immigrants after the feds agreed to pick up the tab.
“It would also provide the state savings of nearly half a billion dollars in Emergency Medicaid costs. I look forward to working with [Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie] and our colleagues to bring it to a vote at the next possible opportunity.”
But some moderate Democrats might balk at the idea of associating themselves with increasing social services for people lacking legal authorization to be in the country.
Some moderates might also resist a renewed push to pass the proposed Challenging Wrongful Convictions Act, which would allow people to use evidence other than DNA to argue they are innocent despite previously pleading guilty.
An expansion of gubernatorial authority to strike a deal with the Seneca Nation might also be a heavy lift following revelations that the governor and tribe might push for a casino in the Rochester area with relatively little public input.
The state Senate and Assembly originally planned to break for the year on June 8, only to keep the legislative action going into the weekend.
Measures that made it to the finish line include a “Clean Slate” bill to automatically seal records for most crimes after people finish their prison terms and parole, which notably faced opposition from upstate Assembly Democrats.
Both chambers of the state Legislature also passed several bills that could help their party or incumbents in general in the future if signed into law by Hochul:
- Most local elections outside New York City will not occur in even-numbered years when turnout tends to be higher rather than odd-numbered years.
- Court challenges to election laws will only get heard in Democrat-dominated New York City, Albany, Westchester, and Buffalo a year after Republicans challenged the “Hochulmander” of the state congressional map in rural Steuben County.
- Approved changes to the public campaign finance system will allow taxpayer dollars to match gifts from big donors up to $250.
A total of 839 bills have passed the Senate and Assembly this year out of nearly 15,000 introduced, according to an analysis by the New York Public Interest Research Group.
Nearly twice as many bills passed the Senate as the Assembly this year, an imbalance that will change once the lower chamber reconvenes sometime in the coming weeks, the good government group found.
High-profile bills that have only passed the Senate cover a range of topics:
- Allowing New York City to implement a 20-mph speed limit on some city streets.
- Increasing worker protections in the fashion industry.
- Banning New Yorkers from keeping exotic animals like sloths as pets.
- Criminalizing photographing or recording child celebrities.
A Heastie spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on what the legislative agenda might be or the timetable for reconvening the chamber.
“The end of session became a matter of ‘too much, too late.’ We’ll be back in Albany soon to officially wrap things up. It’s certainly not the ideal situation, but we still have important work that needs to get done,” Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay (R-Fulton) said Monday.
“The majority of the Assembly’s controversial items are out of the way. There’s a significant amount of local bills for both sides that are just as important to our constituents, if not more so.”
Republicans and their political allies blasted the electoral changes, Clean Slate, and many of the other bills pushed by colleagues across the aisle this week.
And they will likely make additional political hay out of any progressive ideas that make it to the chamber floor in the coming weeks like providing taxpayer-supported health care for illegal immigrants even with federal money.
“The Assembly in returning is bringing new life to the old adage that no one in New york is safe when the Legislature is in session. I might add ‘except criminals,'” Conservative Party Chair Gerard Kassar told The Post.
A summertime return to Albany would also be an ironic twist to a legislative session that included successful efforts by Albany Democrats to change chamber rules, in ways that just so happened to disadvantage the GOP, to supposedly make the chamber run more smoothly.
“Haven’t we done enough harm already,” Assemblyman Jarett Gandolfo (R-Bayport) lamented Monday.
“The rules changes were supposedly in the interest of time and efficiency, but clearly that wasn’t the case,” Gandolfo said.
