NYS budget, discovery reforms, remembering the Vietnam War

Discovery rollback ideas not all good

Since the 2019 criminal case discovery reforms, hundreds of thousands of people have been protected from coerced plea deals, excessive court delays, prolonged pretrial detention, and wrongful convictions. Nevertheless, Gov. Kathy Hochul, at the behest of state district attorneys, delayed the entire state budget with a campaign to roll back these fundamental protections, based on misleading data.

Last week, the State Legislature passed a budget that amended New York’s discovery law but thankfully did not incorporate the most egregious of the governor’s proposed changes [“Discovery law changes,” News, May 11]. We are grateful to the Legislature leaders and many other lawmakers — including members of the Black, Puerto Rican, Hispanic, and Asian Legislative Caucus — for fighting against the proposed rollbacks and seeking the input of impacted people, defenders, and advocates throughout this fight.

District attorneys have been more interested in dismantling the discovery law than in implementing them. Enough is enough. They have the funding they need to hire staff and rollout technology to make this law work. Any future attempts to roll back these laws must be rejected. We know that evidence-sharing does not threaten public safety.

True safety comes from investments in housing, health care, education, and community — not from stripping away fundamental fairness and transparency.

— N. Scott Banks, West Hempstead

The writer is the attorney in chief at the Legal Aid Society of Nassau County.

This year’s budget mess in Albany isn’t new, but it’s the worst disgrace ever. Why are issues of policy, like dealing with exculpatory evidence and schoolkids’ cellphones, not discussed during “regular order” in the State Legislature instead of being left to the budget process?

In the old days, this was called “three men in a room.” Now its “two women and a man in a room” — Kathy Hochul and our two state legislative leaders — but the procedure is wrong. It has to end.

How can New Yorkers trust the “Gang of Three” to handle all these issues alone, while designing the budget and then foisting the thousands of pages of dealmaking on the Legislature for a “vote aye or else” procedure?

— David Zielenziger, Great Neck

If I ran my household the way Kathy Hochul and our State Legislature run our state, I would be homeless, hungry, and bankrupt.

The state budget was due on April 1, and our Legislature passed the $254 billion state budget more than five weeks late. Our elected officials are going to increase spending by $12.3 billion dollars with no public scrutiny, all negotiated in closed-door negotiations.

Why are the taxpayers kept in the dark, and are the legislators hiding something? Why is it that the state budget is more than twice that of Florida at $116 billion and much more than Texas’ roughly $168 billion.

Something is wrong here. State taxpayers need something like a state Department of Government Efficiency. Open the books and show us where our money is going.

— Stewart Hochler, East Meadow

Reflecting on fighting the war in Vietnam

I disagree with Jim Smith’s “lesson” that war is futile [“My time in ’Nam was memorable in many ways,” Opinion, May 7].

War is “hell on Earth,” but it is at times necessary. We must acknowledge there are bad actors who must be eliminated in order to maintain civil societies. World War II comes to mind as does the current war in Gaza. They are examples of a need to defeat evil.

Vietnam was a war that started out to stop the spread of communism, a noble quest, and ended up being an embarrassment to the free world. We gave up.

I, too, fought in that war in the Army infantry in 1968. It was the hardest year of my life and accomplished nothing but disappointment in 1975. But it could have been different if we only had the will of our original convictions. The world today would be quite different if the West had stood up to its foes. We are reaping what we sowed.

We can’t just write off war as “futile” and go our merry way. The bad guys are out there, and they must be dealt with if we ever want to enjoy peace. Yes, some will need to sacrifice, but it will clearly be for securing the future.

— Kenneth P. Lebeck, Plainview

While recounting his experiences in Vietnam, Jim Smith stated that the lesson he learned 50 years ago was that war is futile. I add to these sentiments the words of former President Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe in World War II, who said in 1945 after the war, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, and its stupidity.”

— Jack Bilello, Massapequa