MALONE — For the second time in two years, a North Country state senator is dealing with the fallout of a prison closure in New York’s 45th Senate District.

In November 2024, Great Meadow Correctional Facility, in Comstock, closed its gates for good and on Tuesday, the state’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision announced Bare Hill Correctional Facility, in Malone, will be shuttering its doors in March of next year.

Reached for comment Tuesday, Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, said he was disappointed to hear Bare Hill Correctional Facility was closing.

“I’m surprised that it’s the week before Thanksgiving that we are getting this news, she (Gov. Kathy Hochul) has been authorized to do this, really since May,” Stec said. “This is supposedly about staffing. One of the biggest, if not the biggest, crisis that we have facing our facilities right now is the short level of staffing. So the argument for closures this time was it will allow for the consolidation of staff into fewer facilities.”

Stec said if that is the intent of the closure the decision to close the facility should have been made earlier in the year.

“If that’s true then why wait until November?” Stec said, adding when the governor released her executive budget in January 2025 there were no prison closures proposed.

“The proposal to close facilities came in her 30 day amendments and that came after the strike started,” he said, adding he believes it a fair assumption to say the proposed closures were a response to the strike at prisons across New York, earlier this year, “The governor releases her executive budget and within 30 days of that she has the opportunity to make what are called 30 day amendments. She did that and added the closures in and frankly it was following and so obviously it was a response to the strike.”

DOCCS could have identified up to three prisons for closure this year through the state budget approved by the legislature.

Thousands of DOCCS security staff walked off the job for more than three weeks earlier this year, citing unsafe work conditions and ongoing issues over long shifts and mandatory overtime.

“Over the course of the strike, I think, everyone in state government finally started to realize there’s a real staffing crisis in theses facilities,” Stec said, “That was probably the biggest single reason. These guys were getting stuck all the time. I don’t know if the average person really appreciated it, I think they did over the course of the strike that this wasn’t occasionally being told that you can’t go home and have to work four extra hours. A lot of hourly workers are familiar with that but this was routine after working a 12 they had to work another 12. That was happening all the time.”

Despite efforts to hire more corrections officers, DOCCS still has about 4,000 open officer positions.

“They still have a staffing crisis, the schedule is better than it was but as far as planned time off that is still a challenge, they aren’t getting stuck but they are in a mode where they are accruing vacation but they can’t take it,” Stec said, “They still have National Guard in these facilities. I don’t know if every facility does and it’s to varying levels, they don’t use them as COs, every facility is a little different, and I think they are happy to have the extra set of eyes and hands but they aren’t trained and doing the job of correctional officers. The mere presence that they are still remaining in theses facilities is further evidence that they have a staffing issue.”

Stec said DOCCS is going to keep both Bare Hill and the portion of Collins Correctional Facility, in Erie County, that was also announced as closing Tuesday in a state-of-ready.

“That’s always been a criticism that I’ve had. Historically, they close these prisons and they don’t maintain them or heat them and if you don’t heat a building in the winter it doesn’t take long for it to become unusable,” he said, “I always get concerned about an institutional facility that is abandoned and not used going into a state of neglect and then becoming blight on the community. That’s what we are trying to avoid. Look at Chateaugay and Camp Gabriels, it’s a little tucked away, it’s not like it’s at the entrance of town where you drive in and see it but it’s still a hassle.”

The closure of Bare Hill Correctional Facility, a medium security prison in Malone and one of three state correctional facilities located in the town, was announced by DOCCS Tuesday following a review of the state’s 42 operational prisons.

Bare Hill, which has 293 staffers including corrections officers, medical and support staff, will be closing at the end of the day on March 11, according to DOCCS.

The around 700 incarcerated individuals at Bare Hill will be transferred to other medium-security prisons in New York, while the staff will be largely transferred to the neighboring prisons in Franklin County — Upstate and Franklin correctional facilities, according to DOCCS.

Stec said he believes current staff at Bare Hill will be absorbed into other local correctional facilities.

“Unlike what happened last year when they closed Great Meadow, in Washington County, there was a prison across the street but it couldn’t absorb everyone,” he said, “I say that not to cheerlead the decision but hopefully the people who are impacted by this, if they want to stay in Malone, they are going to have that option.”

Bare Hill opened in 1988 and was the second of three state prisons to open in Malone, and is the third state prison to close in Franklin County after Camp Gabriels in 2009 and Chateaugay’s prison in 2014. Since 2020, the Clinton Annex in Dannemora and North Country state prisons in Ogdensburg and Watertown have closed.