Queens Gazette: New Drug Law Stirs 2010 Election Battles
By John Toscano
Queens Republicans and their Assembly colleagues signaled last week that they will make a major issue of the repealed Rockefeller drug laws in next year’s legislative elections.
Vincent Tabone, vice chairman of the Queens GOP county committee and Republican Assembly campaign committee issued blistering attacks on Governor David Paterson and state Democrats last week when Paterson hailed the start of the judicial diversion program, a key phase of the reformed drug law, at ceremonies in a Brooklyn courthouse.
Tabone, who doubles as 26th AD district leader in Bayside, also used his attack on Paterson to point out that his local Assembly representative, Ann Margaret Carrozza, a Democrat, had voted for the drug law reform which, he said, will clear the way for 1,500 drug felons now in jail to have their sentences reduced and some be let out of jail.
Tabone and other Queens GOP officials had already targeted Carrozza for a strong re-election challenge earlier this year when they charged she no longer lives in the district.
Last April, when Democrats in control of both houses before the state senate stalemate, the drug law reform bill was passed and signed by Paterson.
Paterson, reviewing the new law last week, said it restores judicial discretion by eliminating mandatory minimum sentences and gives superior criminal courts the option of allowing eligible defendants with a diagnosis of drug or alcohol dependence to participate in a comprehensive treatment program. In addition, he said, “The new law relieves new offenders from some of the old mandatory sentencing provisions and provides opportunities for resentencing to some offenders who remain incarcerated under the old laws.”
Tabone retorted that Republicans like Senator Frank Padavan and prosecutors and police officers opposed the changes, to no avail.
As he and the Assembly GOP see it, more than 1,500 drug felons may be “hitting the streets soon”. Among those are criminals who “sold drugs to children or sold drugs on school grounds or operated meth labs”.
Tabone said the estimated cost of the new program was at least $50 million.
Paterson, citing no dollar figure, said, “The state has directed funds to support the implementation of the drug law reforms and related initiatives,” and will help to create or retain more than 400 new jobs or jobs that would have otherwise been eliminated.
There has also been strong media criticism of the new reform law. A recent editorial in the Daily News pointed out that among those that might be let out of jail or given soft treatment upon arrest are street corner drug dealers who are involved in community crime and addiction problems.
One local Democratic lawmaker who opposes the drug reform plan is City Councilmember Peter Vallone Jr. (D–Astoria). The council Public Safety Committee chair said in a statement commenting on Paterson’s announcement, “Today, the Albany-approved jailbreak begins. The understaffed Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor now has to spend its limited resources on trying to prevent drug dealers from being released, while it will become harder for the NYPD to keep streets safe as ‘turnstile justice’ to a court near you.”
http://www.qgazette.com/news/2009-10-14/political_page
