NY leaders to scrap Rockefeller laws

As I write this, Governor David Paterson is appearing in Albany with Senate majority leader Malcolm Smith and Assembly leader Sheldon Silver to announce sweeping drug-law reforms.

According to Paterson, Rockefeller mandatory minimum jail sentences were a failure and the state will now “eradicate this system, eliminate it and replace it with something else.”

“We will shift our services from punishment to treatment.”

The big question for the North Country? What does this mean for more than a dozen prisons, which are a mainstay of the region’s economy?