ALBANY — Two of the North Country’s representatives in the state Capitol are pushing to reverse Gov. Kathy Hochul’s blanket ban on rehiring any of the 2,000 corrections officers who were fired after an extended work-stoppage from February to March.

On Thursday, Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, and Assemblyman Scott Gray, R-Watertown, announced their bill to extend a grace period for COs and supervisors who went on strike and did not return to work by the mid-March deadline and were summarily fired. The extension would allow them to return to their jobs with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision and be subject to no penalties.

Hochul issued an executive order, which expired Thursday, barring any local or state government agency from hiring any of the 2,000 fired officers. That was met with wide opposition, mostly from Republicans and the COs themselves, who said the move was short-sighted and set the state prisons up for failure. While Hochul’s ban on local governments hiring the officers has lapsed, she has maintained that those COs will never work for the state of New York again.

The state prisons are struggling to operate with the steep staffing shortages that the firings made worse. Before the strike began on Feb. 18, the state prisons were operating with about 2,000 open CO, sergeant and lieutenant jobs. Adding on the 2,000 fired officers, that puts DOCCS down about 4,000 jobs, although totals are unclear. The most recent report published by DOCCS did not specify how many COs are on staff, including only “N/A” for the number of COs, sergeants and lieutenants employed by the department as of April 1.

A spokesperson for DOCCS said the number was left off that document because the department is still working to restore regular operations since the strike, and officials weren’t confident they could provide a true headcount of security staff. The spokesperson said that there are still about 10,000 COs and sergeants at work in the system today, the same number the administration has been sharing since the strike ended.

To fill in the wide staffing gaps, the state has called up thousands of New York National Guard troops, stationed them in a number of prisons and is relying on them to step in when COs would otherwise be asked to work overtime hours to run the prisons.

According to the governor’s budget director Blake Washington, the National Guard deployment costs the state about $100 million monthly.

Gray and Stec maintain that rehiring those 2,000 fired COs would fix a number of issues — it would allow the state to end the National Guard deployment, would ultimately save money, and would return the trained COs back to the jobs they’re best suited to do.

“If New York state takes prison safety and costs seriously, Gov. Hochul and Democrat leaders would end this vindictive firing and ban of 2,000 trained, dedicated correction officers,” Stec said. “These men and women went on strike because they were in fear for their health and well-being due to unsafe conditions. In their absence, the state has deployed the National Guard, which is not trained or equipped for these circumstances.”

Hochul has said that the National Guard troops have proven to be very effective in the prisons, and some have even expressed interest in becoming corrections officers. The governor is also pushing for legislation in the budget package that would lower the hiring age for COs to 18 and expand good-behavior time credits for people incarcerated. DOCCS has started a review of about 700 incarcerated people within 150 days of their statutory release date, looking for candidates for an early release push that would put them on a year of probation once released.

Republican lawmakers have been critical of those moves, a position Gray reiterated Thursday.

“Now, due to severe staffing shortages, DOCCS is forced to release prisoners early and, after a long delay, has finally acknowledged the real deficiencies in our prison system in a recently released video,” he said. “However, before this situation spirals any further, we need to take immediate action to correct these wrongs, starting with reinstating the correctional officers who are ready and willing to return to the vital work they were doing. This is how we can truly begin rebuilding and restoring our prison system and public safety.”

It’s not clear if this bill has a path for final approval. It would need support from Democrats in both chambers of the state legislature and a signature from Hochul, who has drawn a line in the sand and refused to consider rehiring those fired COs or allowing them to work for New York state again.