After multiple shootings involving teen offenders turned Albany’s July 4th celebrations into a night of chaos, Mayor Kathy Sheehan said the city hasn’t gotten enough money for programs and support services from Albany County as part of the state’s “Raise the Age” law. Advocates have long been calling for the law’s funding model to change.
Ten people were shot in three separate incidents, and a building was burned down after being shot by a flare gun during the July 4th holiday.
At a news conference the next day, Mayor Sheehan pointed a finger at Albany County, alleging that county programs have fallen short of helping youthful offenders get on a better path.
Sheehan was talking specifically about the state’s “Raise the Age” law, which as of 2019 has made it so 16- and 17-year-olds cannot be charged as an adult except in cases of the most serious crimes. As part of the law, New York State budgets annual funding of $250 million to pay for programs and services to support adolescents and help keep them out of the justice system. The concern, as Sheehan noted, is that the funding goes directly to counties, which only receive money to reimburse programs and services once they have been implemented.
And since the law has been on the books, only 39 percent of the $1.71 billion that the state has appropriated as part of the Raise the Age law has actually been claimed, according to a May report by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That has municipal leaders like Sheehan feeling as though money for vital programs has been left on the table.
Julia Davis, with Children's Defense Fund New York, says the law’s funding model could benefit from an update. "We have a couple of issues going on. We don't see this money going out into communities, but when we do see it go out, it's primarily going to probation and law enforcement and the costs around detention and incarceration. So we have seen not as much money go out into the programmatic pieces that, what I'm hearing, you know, elected officials and stakeholders in Albany are raising up," said Davis.
Advocates have been calling to change the funding model in a way that would make the unclaimed money available to community-based organizations for services and programs aimed at preventing youth arrests and incarcerations. But a bill that would have established a fund specifically for this purpose stalled in the Assembly this session.
Paige Pierce, Chief Executive Officer of Families Together in New York State, says the existing model asks counties to incur all the risk of establishing and running programs. In turn, she says, this has likely led to the high rate of untapped funding across the state.
“The way that the legislation was written is that the counties have to develop a plan and submit it to the state, and it's reviewed by the Office of Children Family Services and DCJS to determine if you know to approve it," Pierce said. "And then if it's approved, they can be reimbursed for the expenses as that were incurred as a result of the raise the age implementation. The problem with that is, there's a lot of problems with that. One is that the counties don't necessarily have money to front. They don't necessarily trust when a new program comes down the pike and they build it, and then the state may decide not to fund it in the new administration or something. And so there's a huge risk on the county's part to invest in something that they had no guarantee is going to continue.”
Albany County has received about $9.8 million in Raise the Age funding since 2018, according to the governor’s office. Of that money, roughly 60% has gone to pay for staffing, while the rest has paid for services.
Albany County Executive Dan McCoy argues all decisions relating to “Raise the Age” are made by the court system and that the county is bound by those rules and does its best to comply.
"We do what we can with our resources. And you know, again, with the ‘Raise the Age’ requirements that we have to meet. We just don't say, Oh, hey, we want to spend $2 million on this program. They laid out what we can use the money for, and we have to figure it out to their standards, not to our standards," said McCoy.
Advocates note that the law has been effective in reducing youth crime. In Raise the Age’s first five years, Albany County saw juvenile arrests drop 22 percent, while arrests for serious crimes were cut in half, according to research by the Children’s Defense Fund.
Still, Davis notes that crime rates would likely continue to drop if more funding could find its way to youth programs.
"It's entirely paid for by the state," Davis said. "And so there are lots of incentives for counties to go and get as much as they possibly can to implement raise the age. I think what we have seen is that process has ultimately sort of calcified around probation and other kind of municipal services that you know you're going to have to have for kids, rather than sort of breathing into the types of services and community based groups that really are going to produce not only great outcomes for kids, but contribute to community safety."
