ALBANY – Controversial “Clean Slate” legislation will no longer allow murder convictions and other serious felonies to get sealed after Albany Democrats tweaked bill language on Monday.
The proposal would let convicted people get past crimes automatically nixed after they serve their sentences and any associated parole or probation as long as three years have passed for misdemeanors and eight years for felonies.
Narrowing the scope of the bill, which also exempts sex crimes, comes as Albany Democrats near a final deal on passing the bill before the scheduled end of the 2023 legislative session on Friday.
“This is the closest we’ve ever been on Clean Slate,” state Sen. Zellnor Myrie (D-Brooklyn), who is sponsoring the bill, told reporters last week.
“The unprecedented level of support has never crescendoed as it has right now. So … I am cynically cautiously optimistic that we will get this done.”
Myrie and Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz (D-Queens) did not provide comment Tuesday on the updated proposal.
Sex crimes were ineligible under the previous version of the bill, which also includes carve-outs for law enforcement, courts, district attorneys, schools, immigration officials, and the DMV to access records while screening job applicants. DNA will remain on a state database.
The list of exemptions will now include all Class A felonies except for drug crimes while less serious felonies like manslaughter will remain eligible for sealing.
Exempting such crimes might not matter so much in practice, because existing sentencing guidelines typically require murderers and other serious offenders remain on parole for the rest of their lives, District Attorneys Association of New York President J. Anthony Jordan told The Post on Tuesday.
And including lower types of felonies minus sex crimes still leaves a litany of serious offenses that could get automatically sealed under the updated bill, he said.
“Let me read you some of the crimes that are Class B felonies: kidnapping, manslaughter and burglary, arson, robbery using a firearm – all these violent crimes where there is no judicial oversight to determine whether or not someone has done anything to suggest that they should be relieved of the reality of that conviction,” he said.
“They stand at the exact same position as someone who’s been convicted of a felony of stealing a credit card, or petit larceny.”
Republican state lawmakers say the new carve-out for serious felonies hardly addresses their concerns about how the bill undermines employers’ control over hiring.
“Employers have the right to know about a person’s history before hiring them,” Assemblyman Michael Tannousis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), a former prosecutor, said.
“This bill ensures that they will not be able to make an informed decision in their hiring process.”
Clean Slate supporters claim the greater good is better served by making it easier to let people work once they have paid their debt to society and enough years have gone by.
Business groups and organized labor also emphasize the potential benefits to the economy at a time of relatively low unemployment nationwide.
“These are people that we asked to be good citizens – ‘follow your parole, be good when you’re in jail. Do all the right things when you’re out of it.’ Why are we excluding them from the labor market?” Paul Zeber, executive vice president of the Business Council of New York State, said at a Capitol rally last week.
State Sen. George Borello (R-Jamestown) pointed to legislative language that blocks sealed records from being used in civil actions against employers who take advantage of Clean Slate as the real reason why businesses are backing the bill.
“These big corporations that are endorsing Clean Slate are not doing so because they’re being altruistic. They’re being opportunistic,” Borello said.
State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie expressed optimism last week about passing the proposal after it fell short last year.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is “reviewing their most recent bill draft,” according to a statement released Tuesday.
Republican legislators are already taking aim at Democrats for prioritizing Clean Slate in the final week of the scheduled 2023 legislative session while arguing that passing the bill will make New Yorkers less safe in the end.
“The far-left majority conference is ending session without taking any action to make New York safer or more affordable. Instead, they are focused once again on making life easier for those who break the law,” state Senate Minority Leader Robert Ortt (R-Lockport) said.
His counterpart in the other chamber, Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (R-Pulaski) argued that Democrats were eliminating “the basic right of people to make informed decisions” while blasting the updated bill language.
“For anyone who cares about crime victims and public safety, this is still a non-starter,” Assembly Minority Leader William Barclay (R-Fulton) said Tuesday.
“Amending the bill does show us one thing: It’s taken Democrats three years to acknowledge a murder conviction shouldn’t be unilaterally erased from history. What a bold stance.”
This is a developing story.
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