Some of New York’s mental health advocates say while they feel there are some significant holes that need to be filled following changes to New York’s involuntary commitment standards in the state budget, there are crucial wins in the final spending package as well.

State Assemblymember Jo Anne Simon, chair of the Assembly Mental Health Committee, says the outcome of the budget battle over the involuntary commitment has left a bad taste.

“I actually am unhappy about the way things landed,” she said. “We essentially lengthened one leg on a three legged stool, and we lengthened another one a little bit."

She feels that while the state budget expanded opportunities to involuntarily commit individuals who are at "substantial risk of immediate harm" because of an inability to care for themselves, it only took minor action in providing after care, and little action in addressing actual access to existing supportive housing despite a program to build targeted new units.

“While they’re building some additional supportive housing, there are currently empty beds that are not being filled, and we need to push that issue,” Simon said.

In the week since the budget has passed, Gov. Kathy Hochul has pushed off criticism from mental health advocates.

“We’ve also had enormous support from advocates and people who have had mental health problems,” she said last week. 

She has defended the steps the state did take, including those adjustments as well as adding 100 forensic beds aimed at restoring justice-involved individuals to competency in order to stand trial in New York City and $16.5 million to enhance county-level implementation of Assisted Outpatient Treatment along with investments in aftercare made in recent budgets. 

“They were abandoned, they were literally left on the streets and on our subways and they didn’t have the mental capacity to make decisions about their own well being,” Hochul said of those needing the services. "I worked hard in the last three years to invest billions in the mental health system." 

A significant concern that has been woven through multiple debates related to mental health response has been the role of law enforcement in a situation which advocates argue requires delicate deescalation.

To that end, the budget also included multiple recommendations of the Daniel’s Law Task Force. Daniel’s Law Is named for Daniel Prude, who died in Rochester Police custody during a mental health crisis. 

Those steps include $2 million for the creation of an entity to help localities develop mental health crisis response systems to take the place of law enforcement in most of those cases, as well as $6 million for pilot programs.

State Sen. Samra Brouk has been a relentless advocate for the passage and implementation of Daniel’s Law.

"By including key pieces of Daniel's Law in this year's state budget, we are making a meaningful investment in building our statewide crisis response infrastructure,” she told Spectrum News 1. “We are moving forward with Daniel’s Law to transform our statewide crisis response system to better serve New Yorkers with community-based, public-health response teams. In this budget, we secured New York State's first multi-million dollar investment to create and fund non-police, peer-led crisis response teams to support individuals in a mental health or substance use crisis. This budget also includes $2 million to create the Behavioral Health Crisis Technical Assistance Center to ensure localities have support in developing their own mental health crisis response systems. After this initial phase, we will be working to expand Daniel's Law-aligned crisis response systems across New York, with the ultimate goal of passing our comprehensive statewide legislation.”

A key stumbling block to full implementation of Daniel’s Law have been concerns over how it will work with existing infrastructure and systems.

Luke Sikinyi, vice president of public policy for The Alliance for Rights and Recovery, agreed with Simon that the changes to involuntary commitment represented a "missed opportunity" to get at the root of the issue, but said the budget investments in items related to Daniel's Law are a positive and will help provide clarity for local agencies.

“A body that will hopefully be able to create some standards for when these teams should be called instead of police, when it’s appropriate for police to be involved in these calls and when police shouldn’t be involved at all,” he said.

While he explained that pilot programs — what he described as step one of implementation — will help localities figure out what works in different regions of the state, such as the North Country.

“What that will look like will be very different than Buffalo that has a city center, a pretty robust infrastructure,” Sikinyi said.

Simon said both the state Senate and Assembly pushed for more money for pilots, and less funding will mean less localization of those pilot programs.

“If we had more task forces in different parts of the state, we would be able to advance this much better approach,” she said.

Simon said advocates have also taken issue with some language in the budget, including the involvement of unarmed police officers in some cases that go against the recommendations of the Daniel’s Law Task Force. She said if Daniel’s Law were to pass in its current form, pilot programs would have to adjust to follow the language that ultimately was signed in to law.