NORWICH – It appears Camp Pharsalia will stay open for at least another year, state legislators confirmed Monday.
“It’s done. We did it again,” said Senator Tom Libous in a telephone interview Monday morning. “Camp Pharsalia is in good shape for another year.”
The Senate and Assembly hammered out an agreement over the weekend setting aside funds for Pharsalia (Chenango County), Camp Gabriels (Franklin County), the Hudson Correctional Facility (Columbia County) and Camp McGregor (Saratoga County) in the 2008-2009 budget, said Libous.
“The sun is shining,” said Pharsalia Corrections Officer Mike DiStefano when he heard the news from his home in Norwich, on what was an otherwise cloudy Monday. “First and foremost, we have to thank all those people in the community who supported us. If it wasn’t for them, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
“This is one step in the right direction,” said fellow Pharsalia Corrections Officer Paul Lashway from the Capital steps in Albany, just after the official announcement was made during a 900-man rally Monday for the prisons. “We’re off the chopping block, as they say.”
Pharsalia, a minimum security work camp, has been on the state budget chopping block almost annually since 2004.
This fiscal year, former Governor Eliot Spitzer and the state Department of Correctional Services were planning to cut funding and close all four prisons in January 2009, citing a decline in the overall prison population and a need to save money for expensive sex offender mandates. Prison officials said the closures would’ve saved taxpayers $10.4 million this year, and $33.5 million starting next year.
Unless new Governor David Paterson vetoes the agreement, the 105 employees at Pharsalia are once more safe from being transferred outside the county. Libous believes a Paterson veto is unlikely.
The next step is developing a long-range plan for the camp, so its employees and the community don’t have to endure the annual stress and uncertainty of a budget battle, said Lashway. A bill has been presented that would require two years’ notice before any more closure announcements are made.
“We don’t want to do this every year,” Lashway said.
Libous said the state and the community need to come up with feasible ideas for how the over half-full camp – which has 165 inmates and 258 beds – can be better utilized in the future.
“We thought we had a solution under (former Governor George Pataki),” said Libous, referring a proposed 500-bed civil confinement facility that fell through. “I’m open to any suggestions. But we have to work collectively as a community and see what type of positive future we can have.”
At Pharsalia alone, the Department of Correctional Services said it would have saved $6 million in 2009-2010, and avoided $2.27 million in capital costs.
However, Tom Haas, vice president of the New York State Corrections Officers and Police Benevolent Association, and officers at the camp have argued that those numbers are skewed. Amongst their claims, they say the capital costs, if broken down, could actually be narrowed down to $300,000, instead of $2.27 million.
DiStefano and Lashway added that when the impact of the closure on Chenango County is assessed, keeping the camp outweighs any savings closing it might have.
“They’re trying to cut people’s jobs and lives for pennies,” said Lashway, arguing that commuting or relocating would not only hurt camp employees, but the county as well.
County economic development officials estimate that Camp Pharsalia – through payroll, taxes, community service projects and expenditures – generates $13 million for the local economy annually.
Haas and camp employees have said the Department of Correctional Services needs to be examined on the whole, to see where cramped prison populations can be spread out; a move they say would create safer and better used facilities.
Corrections officials in Albany have countered, saying such moves would only create wasted space in other facilities.
Due to new special housing unit mandates for mentally ill prisoners and sex offenders, DOCS says it will have to hire 375 additional employees and undertake $70 million in new capital projects to provide new treatment programs.
“We are entering a new era in New York State corrections where the trends are clear: Declining prison population but increasing treatment and services for our mentally ill inmates and sex offenders,” said DOCS Director Brian Fischer in a January press release. “The treatment and services mandated by the courts and the State Legislature are both necessary and appropriate. These services, along with the added emphasis on reentry, are all designed to provide for greater public safety. All such efforts are costly. To help pay for them, closing prisons - particularly those with vacant, unstaffed dormitories - is the right thing to do.”
Libous said Spitzer leaving office, after being implicated in a high-priced prostitution scandal, was a “key” in securing joint support for Pharsalia and the facilities.
Budget figures on how much it will cost to keep the facilities open was not available Monday. A call to the state budget office was not returned.
A call to Paterson’s office seeking comment was not returned, either.