The struggling Albany Community Police Review Board says it needs more funding and continues to look to the Common Council for help.
The board met Tuesday to review and discuss current open investigations. Panelists say they’ve struggled to deal with a backlog of cases and what one member describes as a contentious relationship with the Albany Police Department.
The CPRB has been counting on getting an increase in funding. Albany Mayor Kathy Sheehan presented her $226 million budget proposal Sept. 29, which follows Local Law J's mandate that 1% of police department funding (about $598,000) go to the Community Police Review Board.
"You know, at this point, we're at the 1% statutory amount, I can say that it's 35% higher than what they spent in 2022," Sheehan said. "And right now, based on how much the CPRB has spent, they're at less than half of what was allocated to them in the 2023 budget."
Board member John Levendosky says right now CPRB has been winging it financially, reallocating funding within its own budget. He says the mayor's 2024 proposed spending plan narrows the money gap even more:
"Our budget was cut by 14%," Levendosky said. "This would put us a different strain our ability to do our investigation or do our job. You know, it's been said that we haven't used a good chunk of our budget but that is not accurate at all. We've used our budget consistently throughout the year and we of course detailed all that with the county council and with the mayor."
Levendosky says the board is asking for a funding rate of 1.5% instead of 1%.
Last year the Common Council intervened to help the CPRB obtain some additional funding of $172,000 after Sheehan nixed the board's $2.8 million budget request.
At Tuesday's CPRB meeting, Chair Nairobi Vives underscored the panel's concern about having enough money to continue current investigations.
"The proposed reduction in the board's budget would mean some dire consequences for the board. And as you heard, we are shifting money around as we've reported to the Common Council, our work still has to go on. But there's also always an opportunity cost for what we what we make time for and what we use our resources for. So that being said, you hear our consultants, public outreach, which is most important to me, would suffer given not fully funding the board so we continue to request from our elected officials that they support the board in not just in their words, but also by giving us the money that we need,” said Vives.
Obtaining additional funding for the board was to have been discussed at Wednesday's Common Council Finance, Assessment and Taxation meeting, chaired by 1st ward Councilor Sonia Frederick. Frederick eventually announced the CPRB talk would have to wait.
Councilors like Ginnie Farrell of the 13th Ward agreed. "I was just wondering before that, one of the things that the CPRP brought up in their presentation was a concern about having enough money to do the investigations that they currently have. If it's just possible to maybe get an update on that before Monday, because I think that's an important thing to discuss, too. Obviously, we're looking at the upcoming budget, but I think it would be worthwhile for us to know where they are and if we need to do advocacy this year," Farrell said.
Levendosky adds the CPRB is also looking for a new home, hoping to move into city hall when its agreement with the Government Law Center at Albany Law School ends December 2024.
