Not so fast, New York legislators. There’s still plenty of unfinished business in Albany before the 2023 session ends June 9. Blowing past the deadline to finish the 2024 budget by more than a month does not justify slacking off now.
Housing, the major policy disappointment of the budget, is unlikely to be taken up in any significant manner before next year, but hope remains for other pieces of legislation that may be less sweeping but address key priorities.
Social justice is one of those priorities.
The Clean Slate Act (S.211/A.1029) has been on the brink of passage for at least the last two sessions. The bill would automatically seal certain criminal records after those convicted of a crime have completed their incarcerations with the addition of three-year waiting periods for misdemeanors or seven-year waiting periods for felonies.
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This bill removes one of the major obstacles hindering those who have paid the price for their crimes from starting new, productive lives.
It’s important to understand that sealing does not mean erasing. Relevant law enforcement and qualified agencies would still have access to these records for background checks, given adequate justification – such as an application for a firearm permit. Employers or other entities required by law to request a fingerprint-based check of criminal history also will have access. Also, those on probation or parole are not eligible; neither are sex offenders.
In a case of strange bedfellows, business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Council of New York State have joined progressive legislators and social justice advocates in pressing for Clean Slate legislation. The reason is simple: excluding those with criminal histories from the workforce is estimated to cost between $78 billion and $87 billion a year in losses to the country’s gross domestic product.
Unsurprisingly, the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services reports that people of color made up 73% of prison inmates in 2020, with Black and Latino people making up 48% and 23%, respectively. And a 2020 Harvard Law Review study of expungement data in Michigan called the barriers that come with having a criminal record “the new civil death.”
Word is that this might be the year for passage of the Clean Slate Act. We hope so.
Another bill provides a different kind of relief, one that is sadly – but urgently – needed by those suffering from terminal illnesses.
New York’s Medical Aid in Dying Act (A.995/S.2445) allows a terminally ill, mentally competent adult with a prognosis of six months or less the option to obtain prescription medication they can take to die peacefully in their sleep if their suffering becomes unbearable. Since its first introduction in 2015, this legislation has been stalled in Albany, even though other states – New Jersey, Colorado, Montana, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont and Washington, plus the District of Columbia – having passed similar bills. It’s not as if these laws are being overused; since New Jersey passed its law in 2019, it has been used a total of 95 times.
New York’s proposed law includes carefully crafted safeguards. Patients must have the full capacity to understand what they are asking for, and must communicate that decision to their primary physician. After the primary physician agrees to prescribe the medication, a second physician must confirm the patient’s mental status and terminal illness. Finally, patients must be able to ingest the life-ending medication on their own.
This is a bill about ending suffering. Even the best palliative care can’t control all physical pain or the related debilitating symptoms of depression, anxiety and delirium.
Just as states throughout the country are legalizing medical aid in dying, the opinion of the American public is shifting toward favoring the policy. In New York, both Marist (2021) and Quinnipiac (2018) polls show that 59% of the state’s residents support it. That support is consistent across political affiliations and regions of the state.
In Buffalo, a powerful advocate of medical aid in dying, Dr. Robert Milch, a co-founder of Hospice Buffalo, was not even able to get a meeting with legislators.
Milch died in 2020, three years after he started his advocacy, but before he died, he wrote in a column:
“The inaction by the Legislature to make medical aid in dying available to New Yorkers has become punitive. We have all the data we need from decades of experience in other states. Legislators, you need not endorse this end-of-life care option, but for goodness sake, don’t prohibit it. And by not acting on it, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”
In honor of people like Milch – and many others – legislators should stop avoiding this issue and finally approve aid in dying legislation.
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