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Andrew Cuomo closed Oneida Correctional Facility right after he was elected for his first term of Governor. He also closed Mt. McGregor in 2014.

I was at Mid-State Correctional Facility at that time. I'd started at Auburn in 1980. At one point, Mid-State and other facilities ended up housing double-bunked inmates in gyms for several months. I was already a permanent Sergeant in a permanent item by then. They brought in more officers, and promoted new Sergeants due to the increased population. Then when they debunked us, they bounced everybody back. The Sergeants that had been promoted to the temporary items specifically created for the double-bunked facilities, had to go back to their officer positions, and the new officers brought in were laid off. Thomas Coughlin was Commissioner back then. Mario Cuomo was Governor.

I had originally been in Tier I in the retirement system when I first started working for the county in Rochester in 1965. I left to have my kids, and when I went back to work for another county in the State, I was told my previous time in the system had been cancelled, and I was put in Tier 3. Around 2000, Carl McCall, who was the State Comptroller at the time, introduced a Bill to allow prior Tier I participants, to be readmitted to Tier I if they met a certain criteria. I qualified, so I was put back into Tier I prior to retiring. With Tier I, you didn't have to donate to the system. When I got back into Tier I, the State kept all the money I had donated all the years I was in Tier 3. They said it was to offset my retirement. When I took the job with Corrections, I went to Albany and made arrangements to buy the time I had previously invested in Tier I. Because I was able to get back into Tier I, I was allowed to retire 23 months early (one month for every year of service). But with the Tier I time I had previously bought back, I had almost 33 years of service that my pension was based on.