As debate over the next state budget continues, the New York City Bar Association has issued multiple letters to Gov. Kathy Hochul and legislative leaders urging increased funding for civil and immigration legal services and, in a third letter, sounding an “alarm” that Attorney for the Child offices statewide are “suffering an unprecedented crisis of underfunding” marked by “essentially flat budgets for close to twenty years.”

In calling for a minimum $15 million increase earmarked for the AFC in the state’s judiciary budget, the letter says that AFC “office budgets have lagged behind the cost of living index for two decades, falling further and further behind their government and public sector counterparts.”