Onondaga County lawmakers Tuesday narrowly approved a personnel measure that essentially forces the closure of the Jamesville Correctional Facility and merges it with the justice center. The vote was 9 to 8, with republicans Ken Bush and Mark Olson joining all democrats in voting no. The measure abolishes all of the corrections positions at Jamesville and re-creates them at the justice center to address a staffing shortage. Republican floor leader Brian May says acknowledges it was a difficult process and decision.
"I don't want to minimize its impact on anyone, but there is no job loss," May said. "There are job changes, there are pay raises associated with most of those changes."
May says the duplication of staffing at both facilities has been an issue for years. And, he says, without action, the county faces the ongoing threat of lawsuits for violating a 2015 legal settlement with New York State.
"A combined able-bodied workforce is able to provide the civil liberties that the county has not been reliably able to provide to the inmates, particularly over the past two and a half years or so."
But Sheriff Toby Shelley has repeatedly told lawmakers that merging the facilities is nothing that can be rushed. He says as many as half of the corrections’ officers at Jamesville say they don’t want to move downtown, which won’t address the staffing shortage. And, Shelley says combining the inmate populations could create overcrowding issues and other complications. He says a state regulatory agency will ultimately have the final say.
"We wait for the Commissioner of Corrections to do a feasibility study. That's what we have to do. If they say this isn't feasible, they're going to overrule this group."
Officials with the county executive's office have said the commission has no authority to block the merger.
Shelley says he’s not sure when the commission will conduct its study, but wonders if it might move up their list after the vote. He says the result was expected, and believes other forces are at work.
"I'm not surprised at all, because some people put politics above and ahead of public safety. And that's wrong."
Shelley was among several others who expressed their opposition to the merger ahead of the vote during the public hearing portion of the meeting. Former inmate Yvonne Griffin told lawmakers they need to consider her and others who are on felony probation.
"If you guys put all the inmates at Jamesville over at the justice center, where are you going to put me if I violate probation?" Griffin asked. "There's like a ton of Onondaga County residents in the same predicament as me. You guys are not adding them in. You guys are going to make chaos. Jamesville has two units of females; the justice center has one. My classification...I'm medium, but I'm not bunkable. I will be taking up one cell by myself."
Griffin says there simply won’t be enough space at the justice center to accommodate women, pregnant inmates, or new mothers. Other speakers questioned why lawmakers rushed to close Jamesville without seeking information from outside experts.
