Albany Times Union. February 9, 2024.

Editorial: Bail laws not always to blame

Statistics show that New York’s judges have abundant options for alleged wrongdoers, but aren’t always using them.

The latest panic related to the criminal justice changes put in effect in 2019 was prompted by an incident in Times Square last week in which NYPD officers attempting to disperse an unruly crowd were punched and kicked by a group of young men as officers attempted to make an arrest.

While the full video record, including the officers’ body camera footage, hasn’t been released yet, what’s already on view shows a chaotic and wholly unacceptable scene in which police were placed in peril merely for doing their jobs. Seven people were arrested, all migrants. Five face charges of assault on a police officer, gang assault, obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct. After arraignment, they were released on their own recognizance. Two others were charged with robbery and felony assault; one of those men was subject to bail in the amount of $15,000. The office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg initially declined to prosecute the second man charged with robbery, citing a lack of evidence. If any of these men are convicted of violent felonies related to this incident, they should serve their sentence and face deportation.

As expected, this episode has once again prompted angry denunciations of New York’s 2019 changes to bail laws — which is odd, considering that all seven of the defendants in this case faced bail-eligible charges. Mr. Bragg’s office chose to ask for bail against only one man, but the judge had the power to impose it regardless of the district attorney’s preference. In keeping with general judicial deference to prosecutors, the judge chose not to.

Over and over again, we are finding that an often-overlooked aspect of the criticism of the criminal justice system is prosecutors and judges who decide against jailing or imposing bail on defendants. The statistical picture here is nuanced based on region and category of crime: Times Union reporter Joshua Solomon’s recent analysis of the most currently available statistics on retail theft shows that while the numbers vary across the state, judges overall tend to be imposing bail more often than in previous years.

But elsewhere, judicial discretion has combined with ongoing deficiencies in state law in ways that have led to tragic outcomes. The Times Union’s Brendan J. Lyons has reported extensively on gaps in both the language and implementation of New York’s Raise the Age law that have resulted in young offenders with extensive records of gun-involved crimes being released without appropriate supervision who go on to commit new crimes — including homicides. Legal experts have noted that many of these judicial decisions expose vagueness around terms such as “significant physical injury” and “extraordinary circumstances” that leave judges reluctant to take stronger measures against these offenders.

There is, in other words, urgent work to be done on New York’s criminal justice laws regarding when defendants should remain on the streets before trial, and the mechanisms put in place to prevent them from reoffending. But overbroad and otherwise fact-averse criticism of the changes made in 2019 serves the best interests of no one — victims, defendants or law enforcement — except perhaps those trying to score political points.

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New York Post. February 11, 2024.

Editorial: What’s up with Gov. Hochul’s CUNY antisemitism probe?

It’s going on four months since Gov. Hochul tapped former state Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman to review discrimination and antisemitism at the City University of New York, but it looks like New Yorkers will have to keep waiting for his report — even as at least some CUNY schools are taking some steps to crack down on the hate.

“The problem didn’t begin with the weeks following Oct. 7 attacks. It’s been growing on a number of campuses and seen most acutely in the City University of New York,” Hochul said when she launched the probe in October.

When will New Yorkers get some answers? Maybe before commencement season.

Lippman apparently took it upon himself to mount an expansive review of all 25 CUNY campuses — not just the few that had headline-making incidents, such as CUNY Law grad Fatima Mousa Mohammed’s commencement speech last spring falsely condemning Israel for “murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards” and the July federal civil rights complaint accusing CUNY of having a “pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students.”

Some change is already happening:

1. CUNY Graduate Center President Robin Garrell, who came under fire last summer for hiring pro-Palestinian professor Marc Lamont Hill, stepped down in September.

2. CUNY recently axed a Lehman College session on “Globalizing the Intifada!” that critics ripped as a “guide for junior terrorists.”

Good: As Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-Bx.) seethed, “Any event seeking to ‘globalize the intifada’ is an open invitation to violence against Jews across the globe.”

But the cancellation arguably came rather late, given CUNY’s claims to have taken “many steps to combat hate, discrimination and intolerance in all forms.”

Lippman tells us he believes that the state of mind at CUNY is to make as many changes as they can now, well before release of his report and recommended best practices.

On the other hands, Lippman’s last big public impact was authoring the plan to replace the Rikers Island jails with smaller borough-based ones — a wildly impractical vision that the city nonetheless signed onto and now has no end in sight, effectively blocking any reasonable solution to the current jail’s real woes.

Which leaves us worrying that he’s going to be just as worse-than-useless this time ’round.

Hochul was right to order a probe after the campus explosion of antisemitism after Hamas’ horrific Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

But no one should be waiting on Lippman to take action: CUNY can always incorporate any useful findings or ideas he offers whenever he finally shares them.

The CUNY board, and the leaders of every school, owe it to the public to share what they’re doing now to ensure that students and faculty don’t feel unsafe at a great public university.

Living up to the school’s proud history as “the poor man’s Harvard” requires bold steps to prove that hate has no home at CUNY.

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Oneonta Daily Star. February 9 2024.

Editorial: Super Bowl puts gambling dangers front and center

Super Bowl Sunday is one of the most entertaining days of the year for sports fans and agnostics alike.

The 24/7 news cycle surrounding professional football hits its zenith while those wholly uninterested in the final score tune in simply to watch the expensive, star-studded commercials.

The Super Bowl also represents the premier event on the sports betting calendar. From those making simple casual bets with friends and family to daredevils willing to put five-figure wagers on the final outcome, gambling is never more front-and-center than it is this Sunday.

What also becomes placed front and center are the very real dangers of gambling, which have only been exacerbated by its meteoric rise in recent years.

According to the gambling industry’s national trade association, about 1 in 4 American adults — more than 60 million — plan to bet on Sunday’s matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the San Francisco 49ers, a number that would shatter the previous record.

Bettors are expected to wager around $23 billion on this year’s game, up from $16 billion last year, with $1.5 billion of that coming from legal outlets.

One factor fueling the surge is the romance between Chiefs star Travis Kelce and music superstar Taylor Swift, a phenomenon that has roped in untold millions of new fans.

Around 73% of adults say they plan to watch this year’s Super Bowl, up around 10% from previous years.

Since the Supreme Court lifted the federal ban on sports gambling in 2018, it is now legal in 38 states plus the District of Columbia. Sports betting alone produced $1.5 billion in revenue in 2020 according to NBC News, and that figure has gone up since.

It has also led to a situation the National Council on Problem Gambling considers a “ticking time bomb.”

Armed with mountains of data and now artificial intelligence, gambling companies entice fans to make bets not just on the outcomes of games, but on every part of the game itself. The opportunities, especially in a sport with as many variables as football, are essentially limitless.

Odds are constantly refreshed during games, meaning the common fan can’t possibly determine whether they’re making a good bet or a bad bet in real time.

More than 20 million Americans land in debt as a result of gambling according to Debt.org, with the average loss that leads to that debt estimated to be around $55,000.

For some, gambling is as much an addiction as drugs or alcohol are for others. The National Council on Problem Gaming lists roughly 2 million U.S. adults as meeting the criteria for gambling addiction.

Studies have shown that gambling released a profound dopamine hit in addicts’ brains, with the outcome of the bet often being inconsequential. Instead, it’s the very act of betting and the moment before a wager hits or fails providing the greatest rush for the gambler.

Gambling has historically affected men more than women, younger men now representing the majority of addicts due to the rise of online betting. Many have admitted to gambling away student loan money, savings accounts and family inheritances with a few simple taps of a screen.

There are numerous resources available to those facing gambling addiction, from 1-800 numbers to anonymous support groups across the country.

However, the messaging around these lifelines has been complicated due to the incessant advertising of online sportsbooks, especially those featured on pro football broadcasts.

To present an addictive product like gambling, making it mindlessly easy to use and then telling people to use it responsibly seems like the worst kind of double standard.

There is nothing wrong with handling your own money the way you want to. But acting responsibly and knowing when to stop is becoming more difficult than ever.

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Dunkirk Evening Observer. February 13, 2024.

Editorial: New York State No more tweaks needed for wage

Yet another proposal to increase the state’s minimum wage has been introduced in the state Legislature — and this one could be particularly damaging to upstate New York.

For the past eight years, there have been two minimum wages in New York state — one for the New York City region and another for the rest of the state where the cost of living is much lower. The differing minimum wages were a final parting gift from the period when Republicans held tenuous control of the state Senate. Former state Sen. Catharine Young, R-Olean, used her clout in the state Senate to help sway Gov. Andrew Cuomo that the lower minimum wage for downstate would both help workers by boosting their minimum wage and businesses by not subjecting them to a higher minimum wage that they would struggle to pay.

That system should stay in place, in our view. Western New York, despite the inflation we all have dealt with the past few years, is still far less expensive a place to live than New York City. Businesses in the state’s rural areas simply cannot make ends meet being held to the same wage standard as New York City. We are at the tail end of an inflationary period driven in part by government decisions, first with stimulus checks that put too much money into the economy and, now, by several years of minimum wage increases. Inflation has eaten up any gains workers have made, and simply increasing the minimum wage again will only fuel price increases that will continue to fuel higher inflation.

In our view, A.9093/S.8154 should stay on the shelf for a while. Businesses need some semblance of cost certainty when it comes to wages, and no one knows how things will work with the minimum wage being tied to inflation as was agreed to last year during state budget talks. That compromise, we note, came with a couple of circuit breakers tied to unemployment and employment levels that A.9093/S.8154 would remove – a hasty move given we haven’t yet seen how that system works yet.

Let the dust on last year’s minimum wage actions settle — and see how many businesses are left standing — before making more changes.

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Wall Street Journal. February 11, 2024.

Editorial: A New York Rent-Control Bank Panic

Investors fret about NYCB’s multi-family housing portfolio.

Regional bank share prices have tumbled since New York Community Bancorp ( NYCB ) reported surprisingly large losses on real-estate loans. Don’t blame this mini-bank panic only on underwater office buildings. Primary culprits are Albany’s destructive rent-control laws.

NYCB last month reported $552 million in credit losses, including a $185 million charge-off mostly from two office and condo building loans during the fourth quarter. These losses were bigger than investors expected. But what worries investors more is the bank’s $37 billion multi-family housing portfolio, about half of which is comprised of New York rent-regulated units.

The bank flagged that 14% of its $18 billion rent-regulated loan book is at risk of default. Its eventual losses could be bigger as rent-regulated buildings have recently been selling at a 30% to 60% discount from their purchase price. The values of rent-regulated buildings have fallen by some $75 billion, according to one estimate.

NYCB acquired the failed Signature Bank ’s deposits and some of its loans last spring. But the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. struggled to find a buyer for Signature’s $15 billion in loans that were backed primarily by New York rent-regulated buildings. Last autumn the agency finally unloaded the loans at a roughly 40% discount. Why have these loans become toxic?

Blame Democrats in Albany, who in 2019 restricted landlords’ ability to raise rents to pay for renovations and “de-regulate” rent-stabilized units. These apartments account for nearly half of the city’s rental housing. Landlords used to be able to charge the market rate once the rent exceeded $2,800 a month and a tenant moved out. No longer.

One result is that landlords have removed rent-regulated apartments from the market and are leaving them vacant rather than spend on maintenance and improvements that they can’t recoup. Tighter supply has pushed up rents in the non-regulated market—one reason Manhattan’s average market-rate monthly rent has surged 30% over the last two years.

Lower anticipated future rents have also slashed property values. Loans for buildings that were issued at low-interest rates—the average coupon for NYCB’s rent-regulated portfolio is 3.85%—will also have to be refinanced in the coming years. Some underwater owners may walk away. NYCB’s rent-regulated portfolio could be a ticking time bomb.

Meantime, the bank needs to raise more capital to meet tougher regulatory requirements after catapulting into the league of big regional banks. Its Signature acquisition means it must comply with stricter prudential rules for banks with more than $100 billion in assets. The Federal Reserve has also proposed toughening standards for the regional banks.

Bloomberg News last week reported that NYCB is looking to transfer the risk of its home mortgages and sell assets to raise capital.

Moody’s also downgraded the bank’s credit rating to junk, and its stock has fallen more than 50% since it reported its fourth-quarter earnings. NYCB’s travails have dragged down shares in other regional banks.

Few investors until recently appreciated the financial impact of New York’s rent-control regulations. NYCB’s troubles are a reminder that bad government policy is a source of financial instability. What other risks could be hiding in plain sight?

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