Fighting to stop DOCS, OCFS closings

Fight to stop DOCS, OCFS closings unites unions, townspeople, leaders

By SHERRY HALBROOK
PHOTOS by LISA PULVER
Reading or listening to news reports on state budget cuts, it’s easy to block out the mind-numbing succession of facts and multi-million-dollar figures. For most people it’s all too abstract and unreal to provoke any strong, personal response.

But in some of New York’s most rural and remote communities, the threat of state budget and job cuts is personal, powerful and frighteningly real.

“My staff and I spent weeks in January and February traveling from one threatened state worksite to another,” said PEF Director of Member Mobilization Margaret Messer. “I’ll never forget it, especially this one place we went. There just wasn’t anything there for miles around, and then we turned off onto a little road and suddenly we were in the middle of a huge traffic jam.

Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility, one of the few employers in that entire area. Nearly every family has someone working there and every business has the customers who work there.

“It’s heartwarming to have strong community support, but it’s also heartbreaking to see how much these small communities depend on state institutions,” said PEF President Ken Brynien, who along with other PEF leaders, also visited these worksites and attended the community meetings in January and February.

“Closing these facilities or substantially reducing their work forces,” Brynien said, “will pull the plug on these local economies that already are reeling from hard times.”

Moriah is near Port Henry on Lake Champlain, an area gut-punched last year when its only bridge across the lake to Vermont was declared unsafe and closed. Recently the bridge was demolished and a ferry service was finally established to re-connect the community’s economic lifeline.

Mineville, in the Town of Moriah, is an old iron-ore mining community.

“Moriah Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility is a community,” said PEF Division 382 Council Leader Richard Sheffer, a teacher 4. “Moriah embraced the facility, as it did the mines, to provide employment for the surrounding area.”
Sheffer said the wild, remote character of the area with its harsh environmental challenges is actually an asset for the “shock” program that uses a boot camp style to help inmates get a new and better vision of themselves, set better goals and make better choices.

“The inmates at Moriah care for the trails, campsites, roads and other public facilities throughout the Adirondack Park,” Sheffer said. “For 20 years, Moriah inmates have fought many forest fires, the ice storm of 1998, floods and Hurricane Floyd in 1999. These challenges enhance the discipline and education the inmates receive. They see the determination of the staff in accomplishing goals while dealing with the environment. It inspires them and helps to build character.”

In other words, these facilities are good for the inmates and for the communities.

That’s why so many townspeople, their locally elected officials and their state legislators turned out to support the union members as they mobilized to fight for their jobs.

The proposed budget would close four prisons. Three are in the northern-most reaches of the state: Lyon Mountain in Clinton County, Moriah in Essex County and Ogdensburg in St. Lawrence County. The fourth, Butler, is in Wayne County near Rochester.

The budget also would merge the Annsville and Taberg youth detention centers in Oneida County and substantially reduce staff and capacity in the boys’ unit of Tryon Juvenile Detention Center in Fulton County and also at the Lansing youth facility in Tompkins County. These facilities, too, were part of the PEF mobilizing tour.

“We’re seeing greater unity among the unions, local elected officials, community residents and businesses than I can ever recall,” Messer said. “The attendance at the meetings is overwhelming and lots of people want window signs for their cars and businesses, T-shirts, stickers, anything that spreads the message: Keep their facility open and those paychecks coming.”

Back in Albany, Brynien testified at a joint hearing of the state Senate and Assembly on the importance of maintaining these prisons and youth facilities.

PEF is running ads weekly in The Legislative Gazette, and may expand the campaign to include other media and areas of the state.

“We’re all working together, but I really want to commend our members at these facilities who are not waiting to be rescued,” Messer said. “They are moving forward on their own and coming up with good ideas, such as creating Facebook pages and causes. At Tryon, their Facebook causes and petitions have generated thousands of responses.”

“This is a very steep climb,” Brynien said, “but when our members mobilize and focus their amazing talents and energies on the common goal, I know we have a good chance of success.