RICK MILLER
Olean Star
GOWANDA — Republican state lawmakers from Western New York blasted state plans Friday for early release of some nonviolent inmates to address staff shortages in a press conference outside the Collins Correctional Facility.
The group, headed by Senate Minority Leader Robert Ort of Niagara County, held the press conference across from Collins Correctional Facility on the site of the corrections officers strike headquarters on Route 62.
Ort said the corrections officers had no choice but to strike in February over unsafe working conditions and forced overtime.
The strike spread to more than 30 facilities across the state. After the strike was believed to have been settled, 2,000 corrections officers who had not returned to work were fired.
The correctional facilities are operating without those 2,000 corrections officers, with 5,000 National Guard soldiers filling many of the gaps. Ort said it was costing the state $100 million a month.
Ort urged Gov. Kathy Hochul to rehire the fired corrections officers. If the state fails to rehire the officers, the names of the prisoners getting early release should be identified and the location where they are going to live should be published, the minority leader said. “The public should know who is on that list.”
Ort added that what the state considers non-violent crimes is often different than what the public thinks. “They are letting people out early instead of rehiring 2,000 corrections officers.”
Ort raised questions about how the prisoners for early release were being vetted, where they would live and whether victims of their crimes would be informed before their release.
Also speaking was State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, who thanked the corrections officers standing behind the GOP lawmakers “that go to work every day and have urine and feces and blood thrown at them, that have been told to go back and take it and work 24 hours straight.”
After the COs protest their working conditions with wildcat strikes and refuse to return because nothing had changed, “she (Hochul) fires them unjustly.”
After firing the corrections officers, Hochul had to keep National Guard soldiers in the prisons to supplement the remaining corrections officers at a cost of $100 million a month, Borrello said. She is mismanaging a crisis “of her own creation,” he added.
The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision will decide who gets early release — “not the judges, not the juries… we (state) will decide who gets out and walk through those doors a free person after committing a crime,” said Borrello, who represents the 57th Senate District that includes Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties.
The governor is standing up for “the folks behind those walls that throw feces and blood at these guys,” Borrello said, turning and pointing to the corrections officers standing behind the state lawmakers. “That’s the people she stands up for today. That’s who deserves a break.”
Three Western New York Republican assemblymen also spoke at the press conference, echoing comments by Ort and Borrello. Theft are: David DiPietro, Angelo Morinello and Paul Bologna.
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All Rights Reserved. Star News LLC. Eric M. Firkel.
