ATTICA, N.Y. (WKBW) — The corrections officer strike ended several weeks ago, but its impacts continue to be felt. National Guard deployment costs New York State millions, and inmate mail is now set for screening.
According to the United States Army, 4,400 National Guard members remain on duty in New York prisons as of April 1.
The Army also says those on duty received both a retroactive basic housing allowance pay and $2,000 special duty pay each pay period.
Governor Kathy Hochul's office told reporters that's costing the state "well over $100 million per month."
“Certainly, post a prison strike, we have new costs that will come on to the state budget for provisioning the National Guard on a day-to-day basis. Those interventions alone are costing us well over $100M per month that we did not envision so that's a necessary input to this process as well.”
"You've got these untrained National Guard soldiers in there doing a job they really should not be doing, and it's costing taxpayers a fortune," State Senator George Borrello said. "From what I have heard from the leadership in the National Guard, this could be a yearlong deployment. That's $1.2 billion to taxpayers."
State Senator Daniel Stec suggests the solution is to re-hire the 2,000 officers fired for not returning to work at the end of the strike.
In the meantime, the State Department of Corrections took a step to protect its employees.
Thursday afternoon, DOCCS announced it has entered a contract to screen inmates' mail, fulfilling a promise made in their end-of-strike agreement.
"Long overdue, and they act like nobody has ever done this in the past," Borrello said. "These packages coming in unscreened is where a lot of contraband is coming from, drugs, weapons and other things."
The mail screening will start Friday in five prisons across the state. That initial list includes both Attica and Wyoming.
In mid-March, nearly two dozen Attica Correctional staff members were hospitalized because of chemical exposures, including two who became ill after finding a white powder in an envelope.
