Inside a young Queens pol’s fight for his first law

Queens Assemblymember Sam Berger, left, presents a certificate to the leaders of Amudim, alongside State Senator Nathalia Fernandez, right.  Photo via Berger’s office

By Jacob Kaye

For many reasons, it seemed unlikely that Queens Assemblymember Sam Berger’s first successful piece of legislation would be the one he introduced just six weeks before the end of last year’s legislative session.

Few pieces of legislation are turned around so quickly – lawmakers need time to flesh out the bill’s language, get their colleagues on board and work to get it onto the floor of the legislature among other, often time-consuming processes.

There was also the nature of the bill. The legislation, dubbed Gittel’s Law, aimed to expand the state’s criminal law by laying out specific criminal penalties for mental healthcare providers who previously could not be punished for certain sex offenses committed during treatment. Bills related to criminal justice often languish in Albany for years before being passed into law. Not only are lawmakers particularly concerned with appearing too soft or too hard on crime to sign on to criminal justice-related bills, but the bills’ language often gets tweaked and refined, delaying them for months or years.

Still, Berger’s bill needed only a month and a half to be written, passed through committee, approved by both the Assembly and the Senate and sent to the governor’s desk. In December, Governor Kathy Hochul signed the bill, making Gittel’s Law the first bill Berger, the youngest member of the Assembly, successfully passed into law.

“I was being told repeatedly by different people with political experience that you're not able to do this, it's not going to happen the first year,” Berger recently told the Eagle. “So, it felt incredible to be able to bring that to the table and actually fight for it and then see all that work come to fruition.”

It all began when Berger was contacted by Zvi Gluck, the CEO of Amudim, a nonprofit that provides services for children and teens impacted by sexual abuse, addiction, domestic violence, mental health and other crises.

Gluck told Berger that a client of theirs had been sexually abused by a mental health counselor.

They weren’t alone. In 2000, New York State passed a law recognizing the power a licensed mental health professional could have over their client. The law said that the state wouldn’t recognize a sexual relationship between a mental health provider and their client as a consensual one, given the power dynamics in the relationship.

But when the law was passed in 2000, it only accounted for a handful of licensed mental healthcare providers and did not include mental health counselors, or the half a dozen other mental health licenses that were created by New York State in the past 25 years.

Though Gluck came to Berger with only six weeks left in the session, the then-25-year-old lawmaker thought making the change to the law would be relatively straightforward. All he needed to do was add the new licensed professions to the language of the law.

“It's pretty common sense,” Berger said.

After writing the bill, Berger’s first task would be getting his fellow lawmakers to sign on as co-sponsors and to find a senator to bring the bill up in Albany’s upper house.

Berger said that while some of the conversations about the legislation were uncomfortable, it wasn’t long before lawmakers joined his cause.

“You're talking to people about sexual abuse and you're talking to people about expanding a crime – both of those conversations are things that some people don't necessarily want to have,” Berger said. “But I had a real reason for it, I wasn't just trying to shake things up. This made sense. This happened. There was a real issue. This woman, her life was completely upended by this.”

Berger said that he quickly “perfected the pitch” and his colleagues began to sign on. Bronx State Senator Nathalia Fernandez picked up the bill in the Senate.

By the end of his push, 80 of the 150 lawmakers in the Assembly had put their name on the bill as co-sponsors. The large number of co-sponsors was a good sign – in order for a bill to be passed by the Assembly, it only needs 76 votes.

The bill was put before several committees that needed to approve it before it could go before the full Assembly. That’s when Berger was presented with a major obstacle.

As originally proposed, the bill included all current mental health licensed professionals in its language, but Democratic leadership in Albany told Berger he’d have to cut it down to just a few licensed professions in an effort to make the bill easier to swallow, he said.

Berger said he called Gluck and told him that while they weren’t going to be able to “get everything we wanted,” passing an amended version of the bill was still on the table.

“We ended up compromising,” he said.

The bill was changed to add only licensed mental health counselors and licensed marriage and family therapists, the two largest licensee classes, to the list of mental health care providers covered under the law.

With the amendments made to the bill, Berger was told that it would be passed by the legislature. However, there was only a week left in the legislative session, and Berger said he wasn’t ready to count his eggs before they hatched.

First he had to ensure that the Republican minority wouldn’t ask that the bill be laid over for a debate. Given the late hour of the legislative session, a lay over would effectively render the bill dead.

Berger met with some members of the Republican caucus and convinced them to allow the bill to come up for a vote. The next day, the bill was passed by the Assembly and then by the Senate the following day.

And while Berger was excited, the bill still needed to overcome one final hurdle in order to become law – the governor’s signature.

The Queens lawmaker was initially optimistic that Hochul would sign the bill into law. Not only was it a bipartisan piece of legislation, but people in the governor’s office told Berger that Hochul had supported the bill.

But as weeks turned into months, the Dec. 31 deadline for the bill to be signed began to loom menacingly for Berger.

“It was a lot of just a lot of pacing, a lot of sweating,” Berger said.

With a little more than a week before the deadline, Hochul signed the bill into law, marking a first for Berger.

The Queens lawmaker said the fact that his first law came directly from a constituent made it a particularly special occasion.

“It's my belief that if you're elected by your communities, your job is to serve your communities with the issues that matter to them, with the issues that come from them,” Berger said.

Berger recently presented Gluk and members of Amudim with a ceremonial certificate, celebrating the passage of the bill into law.

“This is more than just a law, it sends a clear message that our community, elected officials and government truly care,” Gluk said in a statement.

Gittel’s Law went into effect immediately after it was signed.

Update: This story has been updated with additional details.