Tag: state budget

Democratic state Sen. Jeremy Cooney reverses bail stance after lefty criticism

Not exactly a profile in courage …

State Sen. Jeremy Cooney (D-Rochester) caved to pressure from the political left late Tuesday night — just hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul sang his praises for being “courageous” enough to back a key change to bail reform.

“Our state law allows for those accused of violent crimes or repeat offenders to be held. And we must continue to give judges the tools to enforce these laws,” Cooney said at a Hochul event in Rochester Wednesday.

“This isn’t a rolling back or an overstep in public policy. It is a surgical approach to the law,” he said.

Amid rising crime, especially among repeat offenders, Cooney had joined Hochul as she pushed Albany Democrats to change – for serious offenses – an existing law requiring that judges impose the “least restrictive conditions” on criminal defendants ahead of their trials, whether or not the crime is bail-eligible.

But after cameras stopped rolling and daily newspapers went to print and web, Cooney expressed a change of heart in a statement to The Post sent via a spokesman late Tuesday night.

“Continued discussion on tweaks to bail reform is necessary, but he did not state his support for all of the proposed bail reform changes,” read the statement.


State Sen. Jeremy Cooney was for a bail change proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul on Tuesday until he showed a change of heart in the middle of the night.
Facebook/Jeremy Cooney

A day’s worth of phone calls and tweets from progressive constituents angry about him supporting any bail changes appeared to be a reason for Cooney backing away from the idea Hochul wants to pass in the state budget due April 1.

“My response of ‘WTH?’ was quite spontaneous,” Kelly Cheatle, a Rochester member of the Working Families Party, told The Post of criticizing Cooney soon after he spoke.


Kathy Hochul in a grey blazer with a necklace speaking at a podium with a blurry indoor background
Hochul praised Cooney as “courageous” on Tuesday, a label belied by his reversal on bail just hours later following angry phone calls from progressives.
Andrew Schwartz / SplashNews.com

Cooney was the only state lawmaker who appeared alongside Hochul on Tuesday after ongoing resistance from state Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) to changing controversial criminal justice reforms first passed in 2019.

A Hochul spokeswoman did not provide immediate comment.

His about-face leaves Hochul with just a few Democratic senators who have publicly supported her proposed bail change while exposing himself and the governor to mockery from across the aisle.

“Senator Cooney is a perfect example of Albany politicians who only pay lip service to issues when it is convenient for them. He is afraid of angering the far left, while residents in his district are fearing for their lives,” state Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt (R-Lockport) said.

Republican political consultant William O’Reilly noted that Cooney’s apparent fear of the left makes Hochul look weak with the Legislature just weeks ahead of the state budget deadline.

“Sen. Cooney appears to be more afraid of the ‘woke’ Left than he is of his governor. That doesn’t bode well for Mrs. Hochul, who clearly realizes that current bail reform laws are a political loser. We keep waiting for Mrs. Hochul to use her substantial leverage with fellow party members, but she somehow seems disinclined to crack the whip. It’s odd,” O’Reilly said.

Violent crime has also ravaged Rochester in recent years before shootings ticked downwards this past year, Cooney critics note is one

“Representing Rochester Sen. Cooney should know better than most that when it comes to bail reform Governor Hochul gets it mostly right. As such it’s sad that he in an outright embarrassing manner would cave to downstate progressive interests,” Conservative Party Chair Gerald Kassar told The Post.

“Strange the governor has such a weak hold on her Democratic colleagues,” he added.

Other Republicans argued that scaling back the “least restrictive” standard was hardly a bold move given the wider push to loosen limits on cash bail while increasing judicial discretion to jail people pre-trail based on their supposed threats to public safety.

“Senator Cooney was correct the first time …  The “least restrictive means” should be removed.  But that’s just a Band-Aid.  Bail reform must be repealed and there needs to be consequences for people who commit crimes,” state Sen. George Borello (R-Jamestown) said.


State Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt slammed Cooney for walking back his supposed support for loosening limits on cash bail amid rising crime.
Hans Pennink

Members of the political left have similarly felt burned by Cooney after he supported a “Good Cause Eviction” bill while running for his state Senate seat with the backing of progressive groups like the Working Families Party.

But Cooney reversed that position amid big donations from the real estate industry and what he later claimed was feedback from constituents.

“A profile in courage! A real stand-up guy!” Michael McKee, treasurer of the left-leaning Tenants PAC, told The Post Wednesday while expressing regret for his group ever supporting Cooney before his “betrayal.”

Cooney denied that he changed his position on bail reform when asked by The Post at the state Capitol on Wednesday while nonetheless citing a letter from 100 prominent Rochester citizens to state reps demanding they support Hochul’s bail proposal.

“I would be against inaction, like not doing anything,” he said. “I do think that we need to give clarity so that judges know that they have the ability for violent offenders, and for repeat offenders to be able to hold them. And I’ve said that on the record.”

He noted that he “did not specifically say” he supported her proposal – despite his comments giving the exact opposite impression – while claiming he would somehow still “stand by her” on the issue of bail despite the evidence to the contrary.

“I think she’s being courageous and leading on this issue. I think it’s well-needed,” Cooney said. “Rochester is looking for leadership on this issue.”



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Hochul’s ‘moderate’ budget plan still leaves New York on a path to fiscal doomsday

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s new budget plan includes a record $227 billion in spending, plus at least $1.6 billion in tax hikes. The left wants a lot more, but that hardly makes her a fiscal conservative.

She’d increase taxes on payrolls in the 12-county “MTA region” by $810 million and extend a corporate surtax for three years to raise another $800 million a year.

The plan also boosts the state cigarette tax from $4.35 to $5.35 per pack. (Get set for even more smuggling; this’ll be by far the highest butt-tax in the nation.)

Even if she has no other hikes in there, she’s already far past the “no new taxes” line.

Meanwhile, outlays for schools soar, despite declining enrollment. Medicaid gets a huge bump, too.

We’re all for some small bits of her spending hikes — support for district attorneys and mental-health inpatient beds, for example. But goosing state-funded spending by roughly $7 billion a year, when New York is already staring at a fiscal crisis before her next election, is hardly frugal.

Yes, she’s nixing left-wing demands for vastly more in taxes on the rich and corporations. But the Legislature’s sure to take her budget as just the floor for negotiations. And it’s hard to see what principled objection she’ll make, other than to note that, e.g., the top 1% of taxpayers already cover 40% of the state’s personal-income-tax takes and are the residents most able to skip off to Florida, Texas, North Carolina and so on.

Progressives are eager to kill the Empire State’s golden goose and feast on the corpse. It sure would’ve been nice if Hochul’s opening offer was to bleed the poor bird a little less.

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Another vital criminal justice fix that Hochul’s ignoring

“A glaring weakness in our effort to combat gun violence is the fact that you have Raise the Age that still permits 16- and 17-year-olds to possess loaded firearms,” Albany District Attorney David Soares told The Post in a critique of the public-safety goals Gov. Kathy Hochul outlined in her State of the State speech.

Right on: It’s another huge omission when Hochul’s claiming to put public safety first.

Soares, a George Soros-backed progressive, has long flagged the issues with Raise the Age, a 2018 law that sends most teen criminal defendants to Family Court rather than the adult justice system.

He’s also blasted Hochul and the Legislature over the no-bail law and other reforms that Soares feels have “normalized” violence. “No meaningful legislative action has been taken to address bail reform, and Raise the Age, which have demonstrably impacted violent crime in our most vulnerable neighborhoods,” he thundered after two more fatal shootings in Albany last fall.

Soares criticized Hochul and the state Legislature for the bail reform laws that he claims to have “normalized” violence.
Photo by Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/Shutterstock

The cookies-and-hot-chocolate approach to teen gun violence just doesn’t work, Soares told The Post.

Last fall, a bombshell NYPD analysis revealed that the number of teen shooters and victims in NYC has tripled in the last five years — a deadly trend that coincides with enactment of the Raise the Age law. The report also noted that teen recidivism has shot up since 2017.

That is: Adolescents are a prime driver of the frightening rise in gun violence across the city. Worse, this means more young people beginning a life of crime — meaning big trouble for the future, with a growing criminal class.

Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie prides himself on being a “numbers guy,” but ignores the data showing that the Raise the Age law has been a disaster for minority teens. Instead, he stands by his theory that teenage brains just can’t learn self-restraint, so it’s just wrong to hold young people responsible — no matter the consequences to society, or to them.

So he won’t consider fixing RTA, and Hochul’s plainly unwilling to force the issue. And the body count of young victims in minority communities around the state will keep rising.

Never mind that the gov holds immense power in budget negotiations to insist on legal changes: She’s determined to work with the Legislature, no matter how little legislators want to work with her on anything besides spending and taxing ever more.

The worst is yet to come, New York.

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Va. history repeating in NY, … and other commentary

Conservative: Va. History Repeating in NY?

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe likely lost the 2021 election with his debate declaration, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Now, argues the Washington Examiner’s Hugo Gurdon, Gov. “Hochul may have just gifted deep blue New York to her challenger” with her debate flub, when Rep. Lee Zeldin noted she “hasn’t talked about locking up anyone committing any crimes” and she replied “I don’t know why that is so important to you.” Like McAuliffe’s gaffe, Gurdon notes, it was a “crystalline statement of Democratic insouciance toward ordinary people’s interests.” So: “It can be no surprise” that the polling “trend is fast against” Hochul. If Zeldin wins, “McAuliffe can take consolation in the thought that he isn’t alone in his Olympian blundering.”

Budget watch: Hochul Hiding Red Ink

“Governor Hochul’s budget office has yet to release the statutorily required mid-year financial plan update,” huffs the Empire Center’s Peter Warren. State law requires its release by Oct. 30. Why the delay? Likely because it holds “grim news” reflecting the “economic and financial market downturn.” The Aug. 1 update “projected a sea of red ink in the coming years, with deficits exceeding $6 billion by FY 2027.” By “signing the Green CHIPS legislation” a few days later, Hochul added “another roughly $500 million per year to the outyear annual deficits.” Voters should be able “to see the full impact on the state’s finances of both broad economic and market conditions, and specific policy decisions made by elected officials.” That’s why the law requires them “by a date certain.”

From the left: Big Brother’s Watching You Vote

TKNews’ Matt Taibbi flags the rise of mailers aiming “to remind people voting records are public, and whether they vote next week will be public record.” Some are handwritten with a signature; one creeped-out recipient says, “It feels threatening, as if a neighbor is keeping track of who has or has not voted.” Indeed, Taibbi reports, “the word ‘Orwellian’ came up more than once in interviews” on “so-called social shaming mailers.” Yet the practice “is likely to increase even more in the future” because it works. “Is Big Brother watching? If the wrong party loses next week, someone in your neighborhood probably will be. Welcome to 21st century electioneering.”

Eye on elex: Dems’ Dead-Parrot Denialism

“It’s never a good idea to tell people that what they see before them isn’t real,” warns The Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker, recalling the classic Monty Python “dead parrot” sketch. On key issues, “Democratic candidates across the country are performing an uncanny impersonation of the shopkeeper in the sketch who insists that the deceased bird is in fact not deceased, but ‘just resting’ and ‘pinin’ for the fjords.’ ” President Biden, for one, calls the economy “strong as hell,” yet inflation is “rapidly eroding real wages.” And Gov. Hochul’s “I don’t know why” locking up criminals is “so important to you” remark, Baker contends, shows “a detachment from the reality in which so many of her fellow New Yorkers live.”

Populist: GOP Must Learn From Musk

Elon Musk’s top challenge at Twitter “is changing the culture of this large organization without interrupting its business,” Bruce Abramson explains at RealClearPolitics, and “it’s a task at which President Trump failed. Trump often complained about the politicization and corruption of federal agencies . . . but he had zero perceptible impact on the culture of the federal bureaucracy.” Learn from Musk’s “first moves. He immediately removed key members of Twitter’s leadership, including its CEO, CFO, policy head, and general counsel,” axing “the highest profile senior people most identified with Twitter’s culture.” Then he “denied the rumors that he intended to fire three out of every four employees — without providing details about his actual intentions. The combined message is exactly right: Twitter culture is about to change in a significant way. If you’re competent in your job and on board with the shift, we’d be pleased to have you stay.”

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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