DANCING WITH REFORM

Politically, Gov. George Pataki is caught between the Rockefeller drug laws
and a hard place.

He says he wants to reform the laws, which are widely viewed as both too
harsh and ineffective. But does he mean it? Is real reform the best thing
for him politically?

A little over a month ago, Mr. Pataki met in Albany with the Mothers of the
New York Disappeared, a group that includes relatives of inmates who are
serving very long sentences. Mr. Pataki pitched his proposal to ease the
most severe of the Rockefeller drug penalties, which sounded at first like
a very good idea.

"The thing that I most want to see happen," said the governor, "is to see
you reunited with your families."

The pitch was carefully calculated. If the governor's plan were to become
law, relatives of several of the people in the room with him that day would
be among those freed from prison. And if he could count on the support of
the Mothers of the Disappeared, one of several groups lobbying for reform
of the Rockefeller laws, his proposal would have a much better chance of
getting legislative approval.

Well, a funny thing happened on the road to reform. The Mothers politely
declined. Even the governor acknowledged that his plan would bring
immediate relief to only 200 or so inmates. There are more than 19,000 drug
offenders currently jamming the state's prisons. In a decision that was
both courageous and moving, the Mothers of the Disappeared rejected the
governor's proposal, saying that while it might have helped their loved
ones, it would do nothing to ease the suffering of most of those 19,000
inmates.

It was an embarrassing episode for the governor. He was learning, to his
chagrin, that after nearly three decades of destructive drug policies,
advocates are demanding real reform, not cleverly crafted subterfuges.

Since that Albany meeting Mr. Pataki has expanded his initial proposal in
ways that have not satisfied - but have intrigued - advocates of true
reform. In negotiations with Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, the governor
has offered to increase the number of offenders who would be eligible to
have their sentences reduced, and to make it easier for more offenders to
be sent to drug treatment programs instead of prison.

From the beginning, the Assembly had been calling for more in the way of
reduced sentences and for judges (rather than prosecutors, who control the
indictment and plea-bargaining processes) to have the option of referring
nonviolent offenders to drug treatment. The Assembly has since made a
number of concessions and Speaker Sheldon Silver acknowledged on Friday
that "we've gotten some concessions from the governor."

So there's a dance going on, an intricate political minuet. Quite frankly,
the Assembly bill has much more in the way of real reform than even the
governor's latest proposal. But the governor's latest proposal is a
significant improvement over the plan he presented to the Mothers of the
Disappeared.

(As Robert Gangi, director of the Correctional Association of New York, has
pointed out, neither proposal would actually repeal the Rockefeller laws, a
move the association has advocated in its popular "Drop the Rock" campaign.
Repeal would mean an end to mandatory minimum sentences and the return of
sentencing discretion to judges in all drug cases.)

The question now is whether the governor is really interested in real
reform. Some of the signs are not good. Mr. Pataki, who is running for
re-election, is close to the state's prosecutors, who have tremendous -
even coercive - power as the law stands now. They oppose all but the most
minimal changes.

A cynic could speculate that the best-case scenario for Mr. Pataki would be
for him to continue his call for reform, which is a big issue with the
Hispanic voters he is assiduously courting, and then somehow to be thwarted
before anything substantive was enacted, which would please his
conservative base.

The governor insists he really wants a deal.

"Sometimes the politics become more important than the law," he said during
his meeting with the Mothers of the Disappeared. "For me, that's not the
case. And I say that in all sincerity. I know I'm running for office, so
how can you believe it? You can't. All I can do is say that in my heart
that's what I feel."

We'll see.