Come late June, most state legislators in New York are typically far away from the Capitol in Albany, getting a jump on the summer after wrapping up their lawmaking duties for the year.
But in a rare twist, the State Assembly’s 150 lawmakers were recalled to Albany this week to address unfinished parts of the people’s business that was left behind when they left two weeks ago at the supposed end of their yearly session.
While the State Senate concluded its votes, the Assembly ran out of time, forcing it to reconvene to consider a handful of bills, including a few hot-button proposals around immigration, abortion, criminal justice and climate change.
One such bill, passed on Tuesday by the Democrat-led Assembly, would make it easier for people convicted of crimes to overturn certain convictions, with the aim of helping to vindicate those wrongfully convicted. The legislation, which generated last-minute opposition by the state’s district attorneys association, was passed earlier by the Senate and will now head to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk.
Another bill that is headed for the governor’s signature will offer legal protection to New York abortion providers who prescribe medication to patients in states where such care is banned.
The lawmakers’ return was accompanied by a swirl of familiar factors and ramifications: The intervening period led to an overtime drive of lobbying by a constellation of special interests, from labor groups to environmentalists, seeking to kill legislation or push certain bills over the finish line.
In limbo, for example, is a bill that would allow the state to extend health care coverage to as many as 240,000 undocumented immigrants who are residents of New York. The bill passed the State Senate earlier this month, but Ms. Hochul has raised concerns about its cost, leaving it unclear if Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, will push the bill to the floor for a vote.
Jessica González-Rojas, a Democrat from Queens who introduced the measure, said that lawmakers spent Tuesday morning discussing it in private. She was optimistic it would be brought to a vote, though its fate was still unclear.
“There’s been a lot of misinformation and, unfortunately, a lot of that is coming from the governor’s office,” she said in an interview. “Our undocumented communities can’t enroll in health insurance, so they’re forced to use emergency Medicaid when things are very dire. That’s bad health care, and that’s a big cost for the state.”
While the federal government has signaled that the state could obtain a waiver to use certain federal funds to pay for the program, Ms. Hochul, a moderate Democrat who has preached fiscal restraint, has argued that the state could eventually be on the hook. Hochul officials have estimated that the cost of the program could balloon to as much as $3 billion annually — a number that bill supporters have dismissed as overblown.
“I also have to be cognizant of the extraordinary costs that are being imposed on New York state taxpayers at a time when the warnings about our finances are troubling,” the governor told reporters in Albany on Tuesday.
One of the more consequential matters hanging in balance concerns the development of offshore wind farms along the coast of Long Island.
Ms. Hochul has called offshore wind, which tends to be more productive and less disruptive than land turbines, a key component of her climate plan. The governor, along with labor and environmental leaders, hailed the approval of a slate of projects off the coast of Long Island as a crucial step that would support New York’s environment and economy. But development would require additional authorizations to connect the turbines, which sit between 15 and 30 miles from the coast, to power stations on land. Democrats in the State Senate approved the bill earlier this month, but it is unclear how the Assembly will proceed.
Failing to approve the measure, which would allow the state to claim existing parkland for a subterranean transmission line, threatens to delay the entire endeavor, say supporters, which include environmental and labor groups. The measure has found opposition among citizens and Republican representatives on Long Island, who say the developer has not adequately allayed safety concerns.
The bill that passed on Tuesday to challenge wrongful convictions, a narrower version of a similar bill the Assembly passed earlier this year, is meant to provide individuals with a legal mechanism to obtain a review of wrongful convictions even in cases where they pleaded guilty. Among other changes to increase an individual’s access to evidence of their innocence, the bill would also allow those convicted under laws that were later decriminalized to petition to vacate that conviction.
“Under the laws in place in our state, far too many New Yorkers are sitting behind bars for crimes they did not commit,” Mr. Heastie said in a statement.
The district attorneys group argued that the state already had laws to protect people from wrongful convictions and that the bill would serve to eliminate finality in criminal convictions or plea deals.