Albany

Gov. Andrew Cuomo vetoed legislation late Saturday that would have shifted the cost of pricey legal services for the poor from counties to the state in coming years.

Cuomo wrote in his veto message the legislation ultimately would require that the state spend more than $800 million a year to fully reimburse counties for all expenses associated with non-criminal legal defense work, including legal services in family and surrogate court.

"This bill would do little more than transfer to the taxpayers of this state an entirely new obligation to pay for any and all existing expenses related to general defense legal work, far beyond legal representation of indigent criminal defendants," Cuomo wrote.

The state now pays roughly 10 percent of the 2010 spending levels for indigent legal services for each county currently.

The legislation called for the state to assume control of indigent legal service costs by 2023, with the state assuming 25 percent of costs starting April 1, the start of the next fiscal year.

The governor proposed modifications to the bill that he contended would have led to state funding for costs associated with extending reforms statewide, with fiscal oversight through the state Division of Budget.

"Unfortunately, the Legislature did not adopt those modifications, highlighting a basic and fundamental misunderstanding within the Legislature as to the true, intended purposed of this bill," he wrote. "The Legislature framed this bill as 'indigent defense' bill. It is not. This bill is nothing more than a backdoor attempt to shift costs from the counties to the state taxpayers under the guise of indigent defense."

The governor pledged to introduce a plan aimed at ensuring "that counsel at arraignment, caseload standard reform, and quality improvements are extended throughout the state, with appropriate tools to ensure accountability and results."

Bill supporters expressed disappointment with the veto.

"Despite the tremendous support to achieve this long overdue criminal justice reform measure to bring cost savings and better access to counsel for indigent defendants across New York State, we have failed in these final hours to reach agreement," Assembly sponsor Patricia Fahy, D-Albany, said in a statement. "I remain fully committed and look forward to working with the Governor, Speaker Heastie, Senator DeFrancisco, and more to fix this critical need for our counties in the 2017 session. We have waited 50 years to fully implement this constitutional mandate and we want to get this right for the sake of all New Yorkers."

Cuomo's veto comes more than two years after New York settled a lawsuit — known as Hurrell-Harring — over the state's requirement that it fund indigent legal services in five counties. The settlement required that the state cover the cost of services in Suffolk, Washington, Ontario, Onondaga and Schuyler counties over a seven-year period.

The legislation's backers saw its impacts as twofold.

Firstly, a lack of indigent legal services in some areas because of inadequate funds is seen as disproportionately affecting minority communities.

"Our current public defense system operates in a way that connotes the message, and very strongly does, that this state does not equally value the lives of black people," Alice Green, executive director of the Albany-based Center for Law and Justice, said at an event in Albany earlier in December. "The governor's signature on the (indigent legal services) bill will reverse this notion and send a very strong and clear message to the state and to the nation that black lives really do matter."

Secondly, counties choked by a property tax cap that is below 1 percent for 2017 see the shift of services, albeit over time, as a massive weight that could be lifted off of local taxpayers. In 2015, indigent legal services cost about $390 million statewide.

The veto comes when the state is not on as solid fiscal footing as in years past. Cuomo earlier this month acknowledged that the state is facing a revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year, meaning both he and lawmakers are going to have to be more stingy in crafting the next budget.

Though that bill must now wind its way through the legislative process again, a new law signed by Cuomo creates a rotating schedule of courts to hold off-hours arraignments in counties outside of New York City.