DRUG LAW REFORM FALTERS

Activists Angry That Meeting With State Leaders Results in Nothing As
Lawmakers Wrap Up

A Rockefeller Drug Law reform agreement appeared remote Thursday
night, much to the dismay of hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and others
who thought they had reached a deal with the governor and state
legislative leaders in a seven-hour negotiating session the night
before. Republican Gov. George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph
Bruno, R-Brunswick, and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan,
said they had made progress during the marathon meeting with Simmons
that began Wednesday evening and dragged on past 1 a.m. Thursday.

But the three seemed steadfast in their individual beliefs that a
final agreement on changes to the 1973 drug laws remained out of reach
for the 2003 legislative session, which was winding down early this
morning.

"It can't get done by tonight," Bruno said, adding that drug law
reform could be taken up later this year if the Legislature returns,
as many believe will be necessary with so many issues unresolved.

Silver also held out hope of revisiting drug law reform before 2003
ends, but said the issue is too complex to rush. Pataki, while
insisting the three leaders "have never been this close" to an
agreement, said there were too many loose ends and not enough hours
left to tie them up.

Pataki, Bruno and Silver all lauded Simmons, founder of Def Jam
Records and Phat Pharm clothing, saying he played a key role in trying
to broker a deal on a contentious issue that activists have been
pushing state leaders to address for years.

But Simmons and his colleagues, Deborah Small, director of public
policy at the Drug Policy Alliance and Ben Chavis, president of the
Hip-Hop Action Network, a nonprofit advocacy organization, who flew to
Albany Wednesday to meet with the three state leaders, were angry.

When they left the governor's office early Thursday, they said, they
were certain Silver, Pataki and Bruno had reached consensus on a
compromise reform bill. The said state Criminal Justice Services
Director Chauncey Parker, was even drafting legislation to reflect
their agreement. Pataki's office did not return numerous calls for
comment.

"Anyone who says that we did not close a deal last night is lying,"
Simmons said. "We had a full agreement on all the details and all the
language of this bill. ... It took a lot of pressing and beating up on
everybody."

In interviews, Small, Chavis and Simmons said the governor, Silver and
Bruno had all signed off on a plan that largely resembled a bill
proposed Tuesday by Assembly Democrats, which offered considerable
concessions to Bruno and Pataki. Most notably, the bill called for
returning no sentencing discretion to judges, essentially leaving it
to district attorneys to decide which drug offenders get substance
abuse treatment rather than prison.

The bill also would have restructured the sentences for every class of
drug offenses -- from the highest, Class A, to the lowest, Class E --
and doubled the weights of narcotics found on an offender that trigger
specific prison sentences. The current laws set long to life mandatory
minimum sentences for selling two ounces of a narcotic or possessing
four ounces.

Under the plan, nonviolent Class A drug offenders would be able to
retroactively appeal their sentences under the new sentence structure
and B-level offenders would see an increase in merit time that would
effectively reduce their sentences.

Silver, Bruno and Pataki also agreed to increases in penalties for
drug kingpins and offenders who use guns or children to sell drugs,
Small said.

Advocates who have long sought full repeal of the drug laws expressed
relief that the deal Simmons, Small and Chavis said they engineered
did not succeed. Robert Gangi, executive director of the Correctional
Association of New York, a nonprofit prison watchdog group, said the
deal didn't go far enough because it didn't include return of judicial
discretion -- a move strongly opposed by the state's powerful district
attorneys.

"If this deal had taken place, we would have criticized it severely
for not being drug law reform at all," Gangi said. "It's marginal
tinkering that would have benefited a relatively small number of people."

Small, Simmons and Chavis described their meeting with the governor
and legislative leaders as grueling. The participants alternately
shouted at one another, stormed out of the room and threatened to cut
off talks altogether. For the entire seven hours, Small said, no one
ate or drank anything other than water or soda.

Toward the end of the meeting, according to Small, Simmons and Chavis,
Bruno decided talks were going nowhere and got up to leave. Simmons
went after him and urged him to return, Chavis said.

On Thursday, Bruno said it appeared Simmons was unfamiliar with the
process and over-anxious to do something in a few hours that the
Legislature had been working on for years.

"To come in, in a matter of few hours, and think everything's going to
wrap up is optimistic, just too optimistic," Bruno said. "He wanted to
stay there and have discussions. ... I was ready to leave much
earlier, because I knew, could see, that we weren't going to conclude."

The Republican leader also said he believes too much time was spent on
drug law talks when other matters needed attention.

Some Capitol observers were taken aback by how much time Silver, Bruno
and Pataki spent with Simmons and how much credence they gave him
despite the fact that he is neither an elected official nor a drug law
expert.

But Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, D-Queens, long an outspoken advocate
for full repeal of the drug laws but shut out of the negotiations,
credited Simmons with "stirring the straw" and keeping this issue on
the table.

"This is America, he's got a billion dollars, that buys him access,"
said Aubry, who spent hours Wednesday night and Thursday morning
waiting outside the governor's office with reporters hoping to learn
of a deal. "There are people in the three-way talks who would like to
see this issue go away and die. He kept this issue alive."

Randy Credico, spokesman for the Mothers of the New York Disappeared,
a group whose members are former drug convicts or relatives of
imprisoned drug offenders, said he felt Simmons had been used by
Pataki in an effort to look serious of reform. Credico and his group
were also shut out of recent drug law negotiations.

"The governor was trying to run out the clock and he used Russell as
the football," Credico said.

But Simmons insisted he negotiated in good faith and assumed the
governor, Silver and Bruno had done the same. And he pledged to
continue to work on drug law reform, even as the prospects of a
three-way agreement grew ever dimmer Thursday.

"If we've got to wait until September, we will," Simmons said. "We'll
work twice as hard. We'll start at the beginning of August and hold
the leaders accountable to the people. When we come back, the
(district attorneys) will wish they'd closed now." bureau reporter
James M. Odato contributed to this story.