Gov. Andrew Cuomo has until midnight Wednesday to sign the opioid lockbox legislation, an issue that has become all the more urgent, advocates say, because of the Johnson & Johnson settlement hammered out by New York Attorney General Tish James.
The settlement will bring in $230 million for New York state. If the governor signs the lockbox legislation, New York will receive $30 million more in the first year of the allocation.
But according to John Coppola, executive director of the New York Association of Alcohol and Substance Abuse Providers, the governor is trying amend the bill in several ways before signing it.
“The governor is not very happy that the legislature has really put some strict parameters on the use of the funds,” Coppola told Capital Tonight.
According to Coppola, Cuomo is negotiating bill language with the Senate and the Assembly around three issues: the supplantation of funds, who runs an advisory board that would direct settlement monies and who would have the final say on where the funds are spent.
“We’ve been hearing that the governor is apparently not pushing hard on the supplantation issue, but is very concerned about having some ability to appoint the chair or the vice chair of the committee that would be overseeing the funds,” Coppola said. “The Legislature is very intent that the funds go to community-based organizations.”
Like state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, Coppola thinks that the bill should be signed as is. However, he believes there is room for compromise around issues other than supplantation, which he calls “non-negotiable."
“The bill is extraordinarily strong and is exactly what we need,” he said. “There is probably some negotiation that could be done around the role of the Division of the Budget.”
Rich Azzopardi, the governor’s director of communications and senior advisor, had no comment.