DRUG LAW REFORM: STEP FORWARD, BACK

Gov. George Pataki's latest proposal to reform the overly punitive
Rockefeller-era drug laws is not the grand step backward that Assembly
Speaker Sheldon Silver portrays it to be. But it is grandstanding.

Current laws give judges little discretion in sentencing first-time or
nonviolent offenders to short stays in prison or to drug-treatment programs
over prosecutors' objections. The result is that many low-level drug users
and sellers, most of them African-American or Hispanic, sit behind bars for
years. About 19,000 drug offenders now pack the state prison system.

Pataki's new proposal reflects, with some notable exceptions, a three-way
understanding he reached with legislative leaders earlier this year to
overhaul at least part of the law. One of the stickiest issues was the
drug-treatment option, so everyone agreed to leave it out and tackle it
separately another time, aides to the governor and Silver say. The
legislative session, however, ended before they could agree on any
drug-sentencing bill.

So Silver's squawking about the absence of drug treatment in Pataki's
proposed bill is just a lot of noise. The governor still remains open to
negotiating that issue. On the flip side, Pataki's new proposal includes
some provisions intolerable to Silver that were not part of the original
"understanding."

Reform of New York's harsh drug-sentencing laws has been delayed for years
because of just this kind of petty and unnecessary goading from all sides.
Meaningful negotiations must restart exactly where they ended one month ago.