Looking back on the immediate past legislative session, New York Assemblyman Karl Brabenec said it was another year of unchecked one-party agenda forced upon the people of the state.
A town of Deerpark Republican, Mr. Brabenec was first elected to the Assembly in 2013 and became the Minority Whip at the beginning of the year.
He said that under Democrat supermajorities in both Assembly and Senate, more one-sided criminal justice bills advanced out of the legislature this year.
The most controversial, he said, was a bill that would enact an automatic sealing of criminal records following the completion of sentencing plus the passage of a certain amount of time.
People convicted of Class A felonies—the most serious category of crimes in New York Penal Law including murder, sexual predation, and major drug trafficking—are not eligible for the benefit.
Those with pending criminal charges or on supervised releases are also not eligible.
After a seal goes into effect, the expunged records are still available to certain agencies for special purposes, such as law enforcement agencies, firearm licensing agencies, and employers who need background checks on job applicants for the safety of minor or senior clients.
The legislation was billed as giving ex-convicts a second chance, but Mr. Brabenec regards it as favoring criminals and unfair to the law-abiding communities.
“You robbed a bank, you went to prison, you served your time, and then you came back and went applied for a job at a bank. If the conviction was sealed, how was the personnel person that was hiring this person supposed to know that this person robbed a bank?” Mr. Brabenec told The Epoch Times.
More than a dozen Democrat lawmakers sided with Republicans in opposing the bill, but that was not enough number-wise; it passed the assembly 82 to 65.
Another criminal justice bill that passed both houses would make it easier for convicted people to overturn their pleas or convictions through an appeal process.
Controversial Bills and Local Laws
Mr. Brabenec said that before Democrats grabbed the majority in Senate in 2018, Republicans in the upper chamber served as a balanced check on their agendas, but no more.Increasingly, Democrats ignored bills or legislative ideas proposed by Republican lawmakers while subjecting their own bills to little debate with the other side.
“When I started in the Assembly, typically what would happen was at the beginning of the session you did the state budget, and then toward the end of the session, you did a lot of local bills; we would do the controversial bills throughout the session,” he said.
“We are seeing a little bit less of that,” he said.“This year, mostly everything controversial was piled in during the very last weeks.”
That afforded Republican lawmakers little time for considering these bills and coming up with sensible amendments; when they do offer changes on the house floor as a last-minute effort, their suggestions were often ruled irrelevant or voted down, according to Mr. Brabenec.
One controversial bill that Branenec did not think would have made it onto the floor was thrust in near the end of the session—it had to do with changing certain local elections from odd years to even years to coincide with state and national elections.
The bill impacts most races at the town and county levels outside New York City, except for town justices, county judges, sheriffs, county clerks, district attorneys, and offices of three-year terms.
A Republican lawmaker offered an amendment on the floor to allow local governments to opt out of the law if they so choose, but the idea was voted down by an almost strict party line.
“If a municipality wanted to switch to even years, they would have that option, but if they didn’t, they could stay the same. Let the locals decide what’s best for them, right?” Mr. Brabenec said.
He said the Republican Assembly leadership would urge Ms. Hochul not to sign the bill.
Another effect of piling controversial bills in the last weeks of the legislative session was that local bills were crowded out and that the Assembly had to reconvene for a special session to consider them; New York’s legislative session typically runs between January and June each year.
Local bills only impact the municipalities applying for them with no bearing on other parts of the state, and they are often the only type of bills that Republican lawmakers have a chance of passing.
Six local bills sponsored by Mr. Brabenec passed both houses this year, including several that give municipalities the authority to levy hotel and motel taxes.
