|
A minimum security
prison in Franklin County and two others will be closed under the
budget agreement reached by legislative leaders and the governor
this weekend.
State Senator Betty
Little says Camp Gabriels, along with Camp Pharsalia in Chenango
County and Camp McGregor in Saratoga County, would be closed if the
Legislature adopts the proposed $131 billion state budget.
Little called the
news extremely disappointing. She said she had been working with
St. Joseph’s Rehabilitation Center in Saranac Lake to provide drug
and alcohol rehabilitation programs for prisoners at Camp Gabriels.
“I’m really
disappointed that despite the visits and everything that we weren’t
removed from that list and we aren’t going forward with an expanded
re-entry program,” she told WNBZ. “Everyone talked about the impact
on the economy of closing that, yet they continued to move forward.
I’ll continue to work on it and try to get their attention and see
what they have in mind for re-using that facility.”
Little says the state
has to submit a re-use plan for the prison by October.
But it could close as
early as this June, Little said, because she believes Legislative
leaders have agreed to a proposal from Governor Paterson that will
allow the prisons to be shut down with only ninety days notice
instead of the previously required one year.
A spokesman for the
Department of Correctional Services didn’t immediately return a call
for comment.
State prison
officials have maintained that Camp Gabriels and the other
minimum-security prisons have declining inmate populations and
aren’t needed. Camp Gabriels has 300 beds but recently had as few
as 94 inmates.
Little notes,
however, that how many prisoners are at the facility is up to the
state Department of Corrections. “They manipulate who goes where,”
she said. “They decide what facilities will be at capacity and won’t
be at capacity.”
The local prison
employs roughly 120 people. The state has said they will be offered
jobs at other correctional facilities.
“Some of them have
already been offered other opportunities and left,” Little said.
“But hopefully there are enough facilities in our area that they
would not have to move far from home.”
The Saranac Lake Area
Chamber of Commerce had estimated the closure of Camp Gabriels would
mean the loss of $35 million in economic impact in the area.
Apart from the jobs
it created and supported, the camp’s work crews also saved local
towns and villages thousands of dollars by mowing the grass in
public parks and cleaning up roadside trash. The Village of Saranac
Lake is planning on hiring three part-time park maintenance staff in
anticipation of not having camp crews this summer.
The closures won’t be
final until the new budget is adopted. Camp Gabriels had been
targeted for closure last year but was spared during last minute
budget negotiations.
In other news out of
Albany, the budget agreement that was worked out this weekend does
not include a proposal from Governor Paterson to
freeze state tax payments to towns and school districts in
the Adirondacks.
The proposed freeze,
which would have saved the state $9 million in the first year, had
drawn strong objections from a coalition of local officials,
environmental groups and lawmakers representing the Adirondacks,
where state-owned land makes up a large chunk of the tax base.
Other areas of the state, including the Catskills, would have been
affected.
Adirondack Council
spokesman John Sheehan, in a Sunday e-mail called the decision to
scrap the proposal “great news.” “The proposal would have repealed
a 123-year-old law that guarantees that the state will pay full
property taxes on ‘Forever Wild’ forest preserve lands,” he said.
Even though the
change isn’t final yet, the Adirondack Mountain Club’s Neil
Woodworth said he was pleased that “this ill-conceived policy has
been stricken from the budget.” “The freeze would have had a
significant fiscal impact on communities in the Adirondacks,
Catskills and other parts of the state and would have crippled the
state’s open-space program at a time when so many critical parcels
are available,” he said.
Among other things, a
total of $222 million was allocated in the state’s Environmental
Protection Fund including $60 million for land acquisition; $24.4
million for waterfront revitalization, $9 million for water quality
protection and $5 for invasive species control. The agreement does
not include a raid of the fund balance from the EPF, which had been
done in prior years.
A proposal to sell
wine in grocery stores was abandoned, along with a proposal to
increase the sales tax. But, the budget deal includes new or
increased fees to obtain a driver’s license, operate a boat, hunt
and fish and buy wine, beer and cigars. There also is an increase in
taxes on wireless devices.
-Chris Knight, 3-30-09 |