27east.com (NY): County awaits Albany ruling on GPS requirement for homeless sex offenders.
Suffolk County legislators are still waiting to hear back from Albany to see if a law they adopted last week requiring homeless sex offenders to wear global positioning system devices is valid.
On March 23, the Suffolk County Legislature unanimously passed a law that requires homeless sex offenders staying at county-run trailers in Riverside and Westhampton, or those receiving $90 a day from the county to find housing on their own, to wear the tracking devices.
The law has been sent to Albany for review by state officials who will decide if it can be enacted, according to Legislator Jack Eddington, an Independence Party member from Brookhaven Town who sponsored the bill. It is not clear when that decision will be announced.
John Desmond, the director of Suffolk County’s Probation Department, previously stated that it is illegal for the county to force homeless sex offenders to wear the devices unless they are on probation.
Legislator Jay Schneiderman said he had sponsored a similar bill last year, but it never made it out of committee. The Independence Party legislator from Montauk said he hopes that the state will sign off on the county law soon.
