Corrections officers working in state prisons are no longer striking, but that doesn’t mean the problems in the state prison system are over.

The state is still dealing with a staffing crisis in its prisons. The shortage of corrections officers was a problem before this winter’s wildcat strikes, but it has been exacerbated by the state’s firing of 2,000 striking corrections officers who didn’t meet the state’s deadline to return to work. Some of the gap has been filled by the National Guard, but the staffing issues persist. State Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, noted a few times on the Senate floor this year that the state’s taxpayers are paying handsomely for those National Guard troops to be stationed in state prisons.

That’s bad enough, but state Sen. Mark Walczyk, R-Watertown, introduced legislation that draws attention to another hidden cost of the state’s prison staffing shortage – and this one hits local pocketbooks.

The corrections officer strike temporarily stopped the transfer of inmates from local jails who have been sentenced to serve time in state prison to the state facilities. That meant counties paid longer for the inmates who are in their jails because the state wasn’t able to accept them. But now that the strike is over and transfers have resumed, they’re taking place more slowly.

According to the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, there were 217 such prisoners outside of New York City on May 2, 2024. That number remained relatively steady until March 2, 2025, when the number increased to 588. It then went up to 1,032 in April 2025 and 1,412 in May 2025. The number of state readies in the Cattaraugus County Jail has increased from one in May 2024 to eight in May 2025 while the number in the Chautauqua County Jail has increased from one in May 2024 to 17 in May 2025. The number increased further by June, when Sheriff Jim Quattrone told The Post-Journal and OBSERVER that the number of state readies in the Chautauqua County Jail had climbed to 26.

It may not seem like much, but you’re paying for those inmates to stay in Mayville when they should be elsewhere.

Walczyk has introduced legislation (S.8848) that would increase the rate the state reimburses counties to house “state-ready” inmates from $100 a day to $300 a day or the actual cost of housing them, for the first 10 days local jails hold them. Then, the rate would increase to $600 a day. It’s a bill that makes sense for local taxpayers that we doubt has much of a chance of making it through the legislative sausage grinder when the next state legislative session begins in January – but it should.

The state helped create a situation in its prisons that makes it nearly impossible to staff its prisons, but the state isn’t being hurt too badly because local jails are helping bear the brunt of the costs. That’s because your local tax dollars are subsidizing the state’s inability or unwillingness to move more quickly to hire corrections officers.

The buck for prison staffing shortages should stop in Albany – but right now, it stops with local taxpayers.