Assemblyman Nick Perry, D-Brooklyn

Legislation that stands little chance of ever reaching Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s desk caused quite a stir over the weekend.

A.416 has been sponsored by Assemblyman Nick Perry, D-Brooklyn, since 2015 when an Ebola outbreak in Africa brought an Ebola case to New York City. The physician was part of the Doctors Without Borders program, was treated and recovered. No one who contracted Ebola while in the United States died from it and no new cases were diagnosed in the United States after the New York City case was released from Bellevue Hospital.

Perry’s legislation has lived longer than the Ebola outbreak.

Every year, the legislation turns up in the list of bills reintroduced in the state Assembly. The bill hasn’t had a cosponsor in five years, nor has companion legislation been introduced in the state Senate.

Perry’s proposal would give the executive branch the authority to detain infected individuals and their contacts in a medical facility. The legislation, reintroduced this week with the opening of the 2020-21 state legislative session, would allow the governor to issue an order to place people in a medical facility or other appropriate facility for three days. Detentions longer than three days would require a court order.

Perry told Politico the some people are trying to create a crisis “so they can rev up a certain group of individuals. They find anything that will feed some fire, and they may find this may be just up their alley. But that was never my intent when I introduced it.”