Andrea Stewart-Cousins on Albany & the Budget

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. The New York legislature, the New York State Legislature has some big decisions to make. Mayor Adams went up to Albany on Monday. Did you see that story? To lobby for his anti-gun violence agenda? Mix results according to the reports so far. With the pandemic eviction moratorium now expired, they're considering the so-called Good Cause Eviction Bill that would stabilize rents for many people in what are currently market-rate apartments. It's unclear whether it will pass.

With President Biden's Universal Childcare Bill stuck in Joe Manchin's United States Senate, the New York State Senate has a childcare bill of its own with women in lower-income families in the states still feeling the disproportionate brunt of pandemic unemployment. It's a state election year, Governor Hochul and everyone else up for election or reelection. The state Democratic Convention opens today in Midtown with featured speakers including a certain Chappaqua resident who used to be first lady secretary of state senator from New York, and the Democratic nominee for president.

With all of that going on, we are very happy to have with us, as our first guest today, New York State Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Her own district covers much of Westchester, including the Hudson River Towns, from Yonkers up to Tarrytown and then over and down through Hartsdale, Scarsdale, White Plains, and down to New Rochelle, and all-around there. Leader Stewart-Cousins, always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

We had her on the line just a second ago, and now the line dropped off. We will get her back. I'm sure this will just take a couple of seconds. In the meantime, we'll open the phones because listeners in New York State, we can take your questions for your state senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins of Westchester. Free lobbying here of the leader of the New York State Senate, but please be specific in your comments or questions. Majority leader, I think we have you back now. Are you there?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Yes. I'm sorry I lost you. How are you?

Brian Lehrer: I'm good. Thank you very much. I apologize if that was on our end. Can I start with Mayor Adams going to Albany this week for the first time since he left the Senate eight years ago? Reports are that you will not give him the bail reform that he wants to eliminate cash bail even more but allow judges to detain people before their trials based on a dangerousness standard. Is that the case? Is that idea dead on arrival in your chamber?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: We had a real conversation with Mayor Adams, we were happy that he came up. We went through the process that occurred during the conversation about bail and bail reforms and assured him that we had considered a variety of things, trying to figure out how we could mitigate the damage that have been done when you talk about, as they always do, about Kalief Browder, who'd been accused of stealing a backpack and wound up spending three years in Rikers Island because he couldn't really pay bail.

We talked about how do you make sure that people who are accused of misdemeanors, people who have committed non-violent felonies, are not taken out of their homes, out of their communities, out of the job, awaiting their day in court? Was dangerous considered? It was. We looked at the realities of how that subjective measurement has always been desperately, negatively impactful for Black and brown communities. Even today, when I look at a Kyle Rittenhouse who shot three people, two were killed, he's out on bail.

You look at Ahmaud Arbery running through a neighborhood, he looks dangerous, he's dead. You look at the capital rioters, those people went home. Today, they're telling us that was the legitimate political discourse. The reality is that the subjective dangerousness then seemed a way that would exacerbate a problem that, quite frankly, we wanted to alleviate. That was the conversation we had.

We did assure the mayor that we would continue to work with him collaboratively on putting the emphasis on what we understand to be the problem, which is this iron pipeline, which is the supportive services that will deal with the homelessness issue, deal with mental health issues, and deal with really working towards alleviating crime. Rolling back reforms that are really directed and allowing people accused of misdemeanors to have their day in court is not, as we saw it, the actual answer.

The reality, again, and I know you want to talk, but I'm just finishing, the reality again, is that there's a national spike in crime. It's not just here. There's a national spike in crime. For us to pretend that our bail reforms that, again, are addressing misdemeanors and non-violent felons is responsible for the national crime wave it's just irrational.

Brian Lehrer: You say misdemeanors and non-violent felons. We did a segment yesterday on New Jersey's bail reform being a potential model for New York. Some people say it is, they've eliminated bail altogether, have gone further than New York on that but did include the dangerousness standard. On misdemeanors or non-violent crimes, here's a clip from yesterday's show of former New Jersey Criminal Justice Director, Ellie Honig, listing crimes that people are being charged within New York, that the law you pass prohibits a bail requirement for.

Ellie Honig: Second-degree manslaughter, stalking, assault as a hate crime, grand larceny, aggravated assault on a child under 11 years old, that's just a sampling, but this automatic release list of offenses is way too long, way too broad, and way too permissive.

Brian Lehrer: Leader Stewart Cousins, you heard some of the serious-sounding crimes the way Ellie Honig listed them there that are included on the no-bail list. Did it go too far?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, what the reality is, is that again, he has a list-- there was a huge list of crimes that we included that he didn't include. One of the things that we did, Brian, is we tweaked-- There were things that, and I have a long list, but there were things that we knew we should include, and when we tweaked those things, we included them in the bail reform tweaks that we did in 2020. The reality is that we have continued to look at the law. Where there were tweaks, we did it. The other thing that happens is that, even in that, there was no recognition of the fact that we did the tweaks.

It became this repetitive thing which, this was the crime and its bail reform, that was the crime and its bail reform. It's become, at this point, it's become like a punctuation point as opposed to reality. What we want to do is combat crime. What we want to do is criminalize criminals. What we want to do is make sure that justice is served. What we want to do is make sure we're not criminalizing poverty. What we also want to do is work collaboratively to make sure that the law is working in the way that it should be working. We're willing to look at it, but as I said, to just say, 'Throw it out," or "We shouldn't do this because of the crime spike" really belies the big picture, again, which is the national spike, and it allows people not to deal with the iron pipeline.

It allows people not to deal with the fact that COVID has had incredible implications on people's mental, physical, economic, health, emotional stability, and not dealing with the fact that we've been in an extraordinary circumstance, while not acknowledging the fact that the data shows that 98% of the people who are not bail-eligible and were able to go back to their homes, to their jobs to their communities, and show up in court. 98% of them did that without ever committing a violent crime.

Brian Lehrer: Just to close the loop, if I can follow up on the Ellie Honig list, you said the law was then tweaked maybe to include some other things. Were the things that he cited now included as somebody could be held on bail if they commit second-degree manslaughter, stalking, assault as a hate crime, grand larceny, aggravated assault on a child under 11 years old? That was his list. Do you know specifically if any of those are in or out?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: I would like to say that many of those are in but I could not say. I don't have the list of what we tweaked in 2020. I can certainly get that for you. I don't have the list. As I said, there is the constant going back looking at what it is we need to do and we're willing to make those considerations. It's not that we weren't. Again, you probably hadn't heard, really, that we'd made tweaks, because from the time we did bail reform, again, dealing with the Kalief Browders of the world who have absolutely no chances of getting out because they didn't have $1,000, and again, he was accused of stealing a backpack. Since we did that, the crime rate before COVID was actually going down.

In fact, Westchester County Executive just did his analysis, and crime is down in Westchester. The reality is that crime was down and we continued with our bail reform that allowed, again, people to go about their lives after accusations of misdemeanors. We were incarcerating less people. I think we just have to get a grip on what it is this actually did and all of us work collaboratively to provide the services, to open up the beds, to deal with the mental health issues. The things that we know are really changing the life of New Yorkers and everybody else.

Brian Lehrer: I want to get to the mental health piece in a minute but just to finish up on bail reform and then move on, the New Jersey bail reform that I mentioned, has some other states too, two now. No cash bail at all. There presumably could not be a Kalief Browder again under that system. Why have cash bail, at all anymore in New York state, if all it does is sort defendants by income for the same alleged crimes for who has to go to jail?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: That was exactly the point. That's exactly what we were concerned about. As I said, because the standards of dangerousness were really difficult for us, again, we have seen statistically and we continue to see it to this day, as I've said, this subjectivity. We've seen that the incarceration rates, I think, Black felony defendants are over 25% more likely than white defendants to be held pretrial for the same crime.

Statistics, young Black men are about 50% more likely to be detained pretrial than white defendants for the same crime. The dangerous standards, and again, it keeps repeating what we've seen recently, all those people crawling up there and crashing police in DC in the capitol, they went home. [crosstalk] [unintelligible 00:13:58]

Brian Lehrer: The answer to why have bail at all is if you completely eliminated it, you would need to impose the dangerousness standard.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: You'd have to and, all of a sudden, you'd be remanding-- We didn't have the standard before. What we're trying to do is to decarcerate people who should not be incarcerated for these low-level accusations. At least, we wanted to make sure that those people were taken out of the system while we try to determine how we can make justice on all these other levels. It wasn't that we hadn't talked about it, but we didn't want to exacerbate this situation.

Brian Lehrer: New York State Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, our guest here on WNYC. As we move on to other issues, we'll move on to our first caller, Fannie Lou, in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC with the Senate Majority Leader. Hello, Fannie Lou.

Fannie Lou: Good morning, Brian Lehrer. Good morning, Senator Cousins.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Hi, Fannie Lou. [crosstalk]

Fannie Lou: It's an honor and a privilege to be on the phone with you. I followed your historic career. I look at you as a political trailblazer in New York. It's an honor to be here. My question is about good cause eviction. In 2019, I was illegally evicted by my landlord because I complained about toxic mold. I was a member of my community board. I tried to organize the building but unfortunately, that did not save me and I became very ill, had cancer. I'm wondering if you, on the senate, are ready to move on good cause and if you will lead the charge? This overwhelmingly impacts Blacks and Latinx women. We're more likely to be evicted.

With COVID, that exacerbated that situation. I'm a graduate, I have a master's degree, I have a wonderful job, but because I got sick, and I've met many other women of color, especially Black women, who have faced that and it didn't matter what economic scale they were on, or educational level. We tend to be overly impacted by this. I'm wondering if you will lead the good cause and if the Senate is ready to move on it.

Brian Lehrer: Fannie Lou, thank you. Let me just lay a background for our listeners who don't know what that phrase good cause refers to, let them in on this. Good cause eviction is the name of the bill, or the term being used for a bill that would fight eviction as retaliation for asking for repairs, for example, as in this college allegation, and it also ties rent increases to the rate of inflation. Non-payment of rent or causing a nuisance, or if the landlord wants the apartment for their own family, could still get you evicted but it's a big progressive priority as you know, Majority Leader, and it prevents gouging on rent hikes, as well as further protects people against retaliation as in the caller's story. I don't see that you've endorsed it. What's your position?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Yes, I don't usually endorse it as a leader, I just generally work to get things, to the floor, that we know are important for New Yorkers. I will say that we have certainly been, I know, the most, I guess, tenant-friendly Senate Conference that's ever existed. Our rent protections for tenants are historic. We continue to try and work towards keeping people in their home. Good cause is a conversation that we are having.

I, frankly, don't think that the current iteration will actually be able to pass, but I do know that we are continuing to work to make sure that we can do something to keep people in their homes. So much of our situation is about affordable housing and that's why we've really honed in on that, whether it's supporting with. We're trying to figure out the new Mitchell-Lama, quite honestly, because we know that we have to commit to affordable housing. That's why the senate protects it. That's why we're going to work on some form of good cause.

Brian Lehrer: Can you say why that's not a more unqualified yes on good cause, or what, specifically, you're suggesting needs to be tweaked in the current draft?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: We're looking at what's going on in other places around the country. This particular good cause is capping the rent increases at approximately 3% or something like that. There are places around the country that have looked at variations on what would be considered unreasonable increases and that kind of thing. I think we're just trying to figure out what we can do that will keep people in their homes while we try and continue to grow affordable housing. I think that's probably, at this point, the [unintelligible 00:19:30] point.

Brian Lehrer: Some kind of numerical formula for percentage rent increases in non rent-stabilized apartments is something that you consider likely to pass in some form?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: I am saying that we are looking at what is being done around the nation and there are a lot of places that have some form of this. We had a hearing on it. We've listened to  what people had to say, and we are doing our due diligence and research. What I said to you is probably where we can both land, which is it is unlikely that the current thing is going to be able to pass, but it is not unlikely that something will pass.

Brian Lehrer: With Carrie in Manhattan. Carrie, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Carrie: Thank you, Brian. It's my first time calling. Good morning, Senator Cousins.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Hi.

Carrie: Hi, I'm an attorney in New York City and I'm also a member of [unintelligible 00:20:39] which is a group working on family and divorce court reform. I watched your live public testimony on the budget last night with interest. I'd like to know what the Senate plans to do about the current crisis or the longstanding crisis, I should say, in the family courts. The New York City Bar and Funds for Modern Courts released a report earlier this month, which Brian had a show about which cited the crisis in the family courts and the shocking fact that there are only 56 judges were available for 192,000 cases in the family court in 2019. Appointing more judges, Senator Levine and Hoylman have suggested would not seem to be enough to adjust the problems.

In family court, there's no e-filing system which exists already in the divorce court. I was shocked to learn that our New York City Mayor Adams said he was not even aware of this issue. If you look on the New York City courts were website, Chief Judge Janet DiFiore, there's a video of her saying that there were no significant disruptions to the courts during COVID, although families had literally no access to the courts during COVID. I'd like to know what the Senate plans to do about this horrific situation. Thank you. I'll take your reply offline.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Carrie. Thank your for call. [crosstalk]

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Thank you, Carrie. Thank you for your call. Yes, we did have a Westchester delegation and the Senate delegation on budget hearing and a representative of [unintelligible 00:22:20] did speak, and said these things as well. It was a hearing, so we listened. I have not seen the report. I will certainly get a look at the report, but the reality is that we work with the office of court administration as it relates to what they are asking for in their budget and how they think that can best accommodate the needs of New Yorkers going through the court system.

At this point, there has not been a request for more family court judges. I certainly am open to dealing with OCA as well as my partners in the legislature to get more family court judges. Obviously, I think this whole conversation is about access to justice, but again, we generally work with OCA as it relates to the needs as being expressed by the system that fulfills those needs.

Brian Lehrer: I think the general gist of that report was that family court is under-resourced compared to criminal court perhaps because it serves a largely low income and people of color community, and it doesn't make news headlines like when there's a sensational crime, so it doesn't get the funding. Do you think that's not the case?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, I think that, again, we can obviously do more in terms of making sure people have access to justice. You know, Brian, I was a former journalist, and sadly, yes, if it bleeds, it leads, but it does not mean that we are not interested in making sure that families get the justice as they need. Even when we go back to, because another comment was about raise the age, even that, a lot of these young people are now being seen in family court, and it is important that the court is resourced, that the services are there, so that if we do have a young person who is maybe opting to go in a way that is going to ruin their lives and hurt community and society, that there be those resources in the family court available. We are very focused on making sure that that and every court is resourced in the way should be.

Brian Lehrer: That was a budget question. Let me ask you a big-picture budget question, which I think you want to talk about, and that is, as some of our listeners know, it's time for the annual budget negotiations in Albany with the new fiscal year beginning April 1st. How much are you and the Governor on the same page? What do you see as the best parts of her budget? What do you have the most to negotiate over?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, I will say that I'm happy that the governor has begun her tenure by talking about collaboration and has been collegial as it relates to communications with the speaker and myself. I am also happy that many of the commitments that we made in terms of doing the full funding for foundation aid were already in her budget. Many times with the previous budgets, we would have to just continue to renegotiate things that we'd already negotiated or buy back things that we would traditionally want to make sure that we spent money on, whether it was in higher education, some of the programs that help students do better in College SUNY and CUNY than they would if they didn't have these opportunity programs, et cetera. I'm happy about that.

I'm happy that she is trying to address childcare. I'm happy that she's trying to address the workforce. I am obviously interested in environment and housing and making sure small businesses are able to come back. I think what I'm saying essentially is that many of the priorities that are in her budget reflect the priorities that we have. Then we look at how do we deal with a lot of the things that we know we have to do. We're talking about fair pay for home-care workers, which we've been trying to address since the last year.

We are looking at again this childcare crisis because we know that if we invest in childcare, we're able to not only give our kids the foundations that they need to make them successful in school, but it also it expands job opportunities in the economy, et cetera. I think the hardest part will be trying to, with our finite resources-- It would be great if our federal government colleagues, and again, I'll shout out to Senator Schumer and Gillibrand and our delegation in Congress who are understanding the importance of Build Back Better, which really deals with a lot of these infrastructure problems that would help us to make sure we have the resources to do the things that we know are really fundamentally important, but right now we don't. It's, how do we do these things within the confines of our reality? I think that's going to be the hardest part

Brian Lehrer: The childcare funding, which I see some Democrats describe as too little, some Republicans say the whole state budget is too much. What would it change fundamentally? Tell our listeners, who might really be in need of some kind of subsidized childcare and receive, for example, new figures that Black unemployment in New York State is at crisis proportions, 15% and more. A lot of that, I haven't seen the new numbers, but I think it's been disproportionately women across all sectors during the pandemic, largely because of childcare needs. What could people expect specifically from this childcare system that you might create?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, I think we've got to look at it so much. We've got to look at the subsidies, who are we subsidizing? I know that, on every level, childcare is expensive. Most of the grandparents like myself, I know, are watching our kids no matter where they are, struggling with trying to absorb the cost of quality childcare. In an ideal world, that would be alleviated for a lot of our working parents. On the other hand, also we have the pay that this workforce gets.

You hear childcare providers saying that in this environment, especially with the great resignation and so on, that it is hard for them to keep quality providers with the kinds of salaries that they are receiving. The ideal would be able to uplift the workforce and create the access that people need, and that is obviously a very expensive proposition. Like everything else, you'd like to be able to make it all happen right away, but you have to figure out priorities, and you have to do what you have to do.

I also tell people that the first demonstration I did in front of City Hall in New York, where I was a young single mother, was begging the board of estimates not to cut the subsidies that I was getting. I was making $7900 and they decided that that was too much for me to get a subsidy, me and other parents, so they cut it. They wanted us to start paying $100 a week, which would have been more than half of my annual salary. Couldn't happen. I was fortunate I had my mother, but I never forget those days. Unfortunately, people are still living that.

Brian Lehrer: It's a good formative story that carries lessons for many people. I think we have time for one more call. I think this one is from within your district. Shyok in White Plains, you're on WNYC with New York State Senate majority leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. Hi, Shyok.

Shyok: Hello, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. Good morning, Senator Stewart-Cousins.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Good morning. [crosstalk]

Shyok: I live in White Plains in your district. Good morning. The last year, I actually had a studio in Yonkers, also in your district. When Hurricane Ida happened, the entire ground floor of the building was flooded and people lost lots of things. I'm really concerned about climate change. I was concerned that Brian did not mention it, it was one of the important issues. New York has a great climate law on the books. It was passed in 2019, it has a great goal to be [unintelligible 00:32:33] to be net neutral by 2050.

It took 10 years to pass and in that time all funding was stripped out of it. It set up this long process to create the process of getting to net-zero, and that process has two-thirds of the way there now, and that the Climate Action Council has said that we need $10 to $15 billion a year initially to meet those goals. My question to you is, how much of that are we going to get in the budget this year?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Thank you, Shyok. Yes, you're right. Up until, again, the Democratic leadership, the Democratic majority, there was no acknowledgment in at least this house of climate change and the perils that it presents for not only the current planet but the future that we're going to leave our kids. Yes, we did do very, very aggressive, most, I would think, aggressive in the country in terms of our goals and objectives. We are working with our Climate Action Council to figure out a way forward.

Again, I don't know how many billions we are looking at. As you know a bond that we will be putting in front of the voters this year that will, if they pass it, will allow us to have several billions. We were talking about $3, the governor is talking about $4. We'll see what we get to that will help with infrastructure, but we also know that we need more resources. Again, it would be nice if we had help from the federal partners who also understand that climate change is real, but we are in the process of negotiating to figure out how much we can put towards and where these resources are going to come from, but there is no question that we need a lot of money in order to make our goals and we understand the importance of making them.

Brian Lehrer: Shyok, thank you very much for your call. As we run out of time, I'll ask you one closing politics question, a combo question since there's only time for one more and you can answer however you want to wrap up the appearance. A, are you going to the state Democratic Convention in the Times-

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Yes.

Brian Lehrer: - Square area, which I believe opens today? That's a yes.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Tomorrow we have a session.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, tomorrow?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, no, it opens for some people today. I will not be there today. I will get there tomorrow after the session.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Governor Hochul will get the state party backing for a full-time almost certainly, but she's got Tom Suozzi running to her right and Jumaane Williams running to her left for the nomination. Suozzi is tweeting about the governor's plan to allow single-family homeowners to create one apartment for rent within their homes. He says it would end single-family zoning in the state, that could affect your district in Westchester. Do you have a position on that? Have you endorsed for governor?

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: The ADUs are big, big topic. It's all over. There's just people who are thrilled and people who are not happy, again, as we talked earlier clearly, and I think our conference clearly understands the need for affordable housing. We clearly understand that certainly, during these climate change incidents in Hurricane Ida, the tragedy that occurred with people living in places that were substandard, and not suitable.

I think everybody is trying to figure out that way to create more affordable housing while protecting the local government rights. This is a conversation that continues to evolve. Again, a lot of people talked about it in our hearing, a lot of people are weighing in on it. Again, I think we will, as we normally do, find a suitable path that accommodates the need, along with again, respecting the communities that are going to be involved.

I was going to say this is an evolving conversation. I will be supporting the ticket.

Brian Lehrer: Supporting a ticket, meaning whoever wins the primary.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: No, tomorrow we have the convention, I will be supporting the people who come out of that convention.

Brian Lehrer: Got you.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: I wanted to answer all your questions, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: You did, and I appreciate answering so many questions on so many topics today from me and from our listeners. We always appreciate when you come on the show, and for the access that you give the callers around the state from time to time here. Thank you for doing it in the past, for today. We look forward to next time, and good luck as [unintelligible 00:38:03]

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Well, I'm a fan, Brian. I have to tell the truth. I listen to you when I can too. I feel like I'm actually part of your radio family.

Brian Lehrer: It makes me feel very good. All right, thanks so much. Great to talk.

Andrea Stewart-Cousins: Take care. Bye-bye.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, much more to come.

 

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