Addiction

"I’m confident this is not one of these issues that will be in the partisan maw, we can get bipartisan support for it."

The Southern Tier region will receive about $4.8 million from the settlement in 2022. The initial payout on Tuesday totaled about $759,000 for the region.

Some people in the Southern Tier say supervised drug-injection sites can save lives. Others say it enables drug use.

New York's bail reform law does not allocate any additional funds for treatment centers and similar programs, which has been a bipartisan critique of the 2019 policy.

"Some of these programs will be going on for years without the kind of review that they should be having."

“Our numbers in person dwindled down to zero because we weren’t even in the building. But the reach that we made tripled.”

“In my view, the county taxpayers shouldn’t foot a bill for a crisis that we didn’t create."

Members of the Assembly held an hours-long meeting, speaking with stakeholders in the healthcare industry on what can be done to save the lives of people dealing with addiction and mental illness.

"It just replays in the back of my mind, like, 'Hey, if I didn’t moved out I could have saved her.'"

"We need to be ready, and this project is going to be an important tool that we have to address this crisis.”