A new bill asks Gov. Kathy Hochul and state
legislators to overhaul New York’s broken guardianship system. It cites a
ProPublica investigation that found the elderly and infirm living in
dire conditions while under court-mandated oversight.
by Jake Pearson
The chair of the New York
City Council’s Committee on Aging is calling on Gov. Kathy Hochul and
legislative leaders to overhaul the state’s beleaguered guardianship
system in response to a ProPublica investigation that found elderly and
infirm New Yorkers living in dire conditions while under court-mandated
oversight.
City Councilmember Crystal
Hudson introduced a resolution last week intended to force Albany to
take up the cause of those whom judges have deemed incapable of managing
their own affairs — a constituency without powerful lobbyists or
political influence whose needs have long been ignored by state legislators.
“Too many people have been
failed by this system, and a real overhaul is long overdue,” said
Hudson, a Democrat. “We need a system that instills confidence — one
that guarantees people in need of guardianships a dignified existence.”
More than 28,000 people
statewide are currently under the care of court-appointed guardians, and
nearly 60% of them live in New York City.
Hudson’s bill, which calls
for an annual infusion of state funding to serve poor New Yorkers in the
system, will be the subject of public hearings later this fall.
The proposal cites a series
of stories this year by ProPublica that revealed how thousands of
residents who have no family or friends to look after them are
ill-served by many of the nonprofits and private attorneys that judges
appoint to oversee their well-being. In the guardianship industry, this
group of wards is known as “the unbefriended.”
The news organization found
that there are too few guardians available to serve the people who need
them and even fewer overseers, called examiners, to review the
guardians’ work. A dearth of court staff and judges has compounded the
problem. ProPublica found that annual assessments of guardians’ care can
take years to complete, and even then the court oversight mostly
focuses on financial paperwork, with officials rarely visiting wards in
person.
The lack of scrutiny and
long delays can result in unchecked neglect, as well as financial
exploitation of New York’s most vulnerable people. A woman featured in
ProPublica’s reporting lived for years in a home that had no heat and was infested by bedbugs and rats
— conditions her legally appointed guardian did not rectify and her
examiner did not question. Another man’s guardian spent more than half
of her ward’s life savings for care provided by her own private business
— a flagrant conflict of interest that a judge permitted for years.
Hudson’s resolution would
pressure state legislative leaders and the governor to bolster the
system by allocating state money to pay for more guardians. The current
system is largely unfunded. So judges often ask lawyers to take on cases
pro bono or assign nonprofits, which take monthly fees directly from
their wards’ accounts. For a small group of people in need, county
social service departments pick up the tab, though judges say the groups
they contract with to provide those services are overburdened and
understaffed.
To fix the problem, the
legislation suggests a plan developed by Guardianship Access New York, a
coalition of nonprofit providers. It calls for a “significant and
permanent statewide investment in nonprofit guardianship services” of
$15 million annually. That’s similar to what happens in Florida, which publicly funds 16 nonprofits that serve thousands of eligible wards.
In GANY’s proposal, the funding would go to vetted groups that would
then serve 1,500 New Yorkers each year to “ensure access to an ethical,
reliable, and effective guardian.”
Kimberly George, a leader
of GANY who also runs Project Guardianship, a nonprofit group that
serves as guardian to about 160 New York City wards, said in an
interview that the proposal “wouldn’t fix the whole system, but it’s a
big piece of it.”
“If judges have reliable
good guardians to go to, maybe they won’t have to appoint ones that they
know are questionable or aren’t sure about,” she said.
Judges, for example, have long relied on a guardianship company featured by ProPublica even as it failed to meet the needs of more than a dozen wards.
In one case, it collected monthly fees from an elderly man even after
he left the country — and also after he died. The group, which serves
hundreds of poor New Yorkers, continues to receive appointments. The
company has declined to answer questions about specific clients but
previously told ProPublica that it was accountable to the court and that
its work was scrutinized by examiners, who are empowered to raise any
issues.
The city resolution comes
as the state court system crafts its own guardianship proposals in
advance of next year’s legislative session, which begins in January.
According to an internal
proposal obtained by ProPublica, an advisory committee of judges and
lawyers has recommended that the state’s top judicial leaders and court
administrators ask Albany to create a “fully funded statewide entity” to
serve as a public guardian. Such a government entity, the committee
estimates, would cost $72 million to staff and would serve the
“unbefriended” in each county — a population the proposal estimates
represents about 20% of all wards statewide.
The committee also
recommended that the courts seek to increase compensation for court
examiners, as well as court evaluators, who assess the needs and
capacities of people before a judge imposes guardianship. That money
would come from funding that is now reserved for lawyers who represent
the indigent in criminal cases, not from wards’ own funds.
A court spokesperson said
the state’s top judicial leaders “have made clear to our partners in
other branches of government that we support the creation of a statewide
public guardianship program as a key component of an overhaul of the
system.”
Spokesperson Al Baker
added: “We are proud to be advocating for additional funding to cover
the costs of guardianships, particularly to assist those who are the
most economically constrained.”
State lawmakers last
seriously addressed the court-appointed guardianship system 30 years
ago, when they passed the state’s main guardianship statute, Article 81
of the Mental Hygiene Law. This year during budget negotiations,
lawmakers secured just $1 million to fund a statewide helpline, despite a request to provide $5 million to combat some of the bigger problems detailed in ProPublica’s reporting.
Spokespeople for the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins,
and Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, didn’t respond to requests for
comment on Hudson’s resolution.
Neither did the office of
Hochul, whose support will be essential to any guardianship reform. The
Democrat, who took office three years ago, has proposed a plan to confront the needs of the state’s aging population, which mentions guardianship, among other measures, though it spells out few details.
Advocates hope Hochul will
be receptive to an overhaul, given her record on a related issue. In
July 2022, she signed into law a bill that provides an alternative to
guardianship for people with intellectual and developmental
disabilities, permitting them, not a guardian, to make decisions about
their own lives.
At the bill signing, according to a transcript, she acknowledged the power of government to better the circumstances of the vulnerable.
New York, she said, had “a
well-intended Legislature and a governor who wanted to make sure if
there’s any issue that comes to our attention where a wrong needs to be
righted, we will take the pen and do just that. And that is what today
is about.”
Full Article & Source:
“A Real Overhaul Is Long Overdue”: Lawmaker Calls On State Leaders to Reform New York’s Beleaguered Guardianship System
