Insider News Center: From Bronxville Insider: Bronxville Mayor Mary Marvin Weekly Column: Mayor's Column Week of April 25th.

 

Mayor’s Column: April 25, 2022.

As I customarily do it this time of year, the following is a synopsis of the new 2022-23 New York State budget recently passed in Albany. The approved budget is $220 billion up $47 billion or 27% from 2021 fiscal year budget.

As you can imagine, there are hundreds of spending appropriations, agreements and policy implications in a budget that is larger than many small countries.

Policy changes were made as part of this budget relating to the 2019 bail reform legislation. As history, under the 2019 law, judges were no longer able to set bail for a wide-ranging list of misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies including burglary, stalking, assault without serious injuries, many drug offenses and certain arson and robbery. All those charged with these crimes were released to await trial.

In New York State, bail is imposed solely to ensure that people return to court. Judges are not supposed to set bail for defendants who they think might be a public safety risk. New York stands alone as the only state without a so-called dangerousness standard.

The changes enacted now allow judges more discretion but they still must choose the least restrictive means to ensure a defendant returns to court and cannot explicitly assess the defendant’s dangerousness.

However, they can now weigh specific factors in setting bail, including whether a defendant is accused of causing serious harm to someone and whether the defendant has a history of using or possessing a gun.

The new law also expands the number of crimes for which defendants can be required to post bail including stricter rules for people accused of repeated offensives that harmed people or property, gun possession on school grounds, repeat property theft, altered weapons, gun sales to minors and all hate crimes.

No new monies were funneled to local governments for the thirteenth year in a row.

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