ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul seems to have opened the door to permitting the roughly 2,000 state prison correctional officers who were fired last week to work for other law enforcement agencies in New York, something that sheriffs across the state have been asking her to do.

After not returning to work after a weeks-long strike last Monday, the state moved to fire those 2,000 COs and remove them from the state registry of licensed police and peace officers “for cause.” She also signed an executive order requiring that no state agencies or local governments move to hire those COs, under emergency powers her office can take in limited cases.

Hochul’s order was all-encompassing, blocking those COs from seeking any other law enforcement work in the state, as well as any work with other non-law enforcement agencies, offices or local governments. That includes county sheriff’s offices, which run the local jails in each of New York’s upstate counties.

The state Sheriff’s Association has been in discussions with the Hochul administration urging her to revoke or amend her order to allow the sheriff’s to hire some of the fired COs, to fill some of the estimated 1,000 open jobs at the county jails statewide.

When asked at a housing event in Albany on Tuesday, Hochul said her order barring local governments from hiring those officers would only stand until April 9 — but stressed that the ban on rehiring those COs would stand across all state agencies indefinitely.

“If these people want to go work for local law enforcement, certainly that’s their prerogative,” she said. “But I just want to remind everybody, I’d be very cautious, because these individuals had a responsibility to protect the public and the incarcerated population and they walked off the job for 22 days, many of them, and that’s something that’s very hard to get over.”

Hochul criticized the officers who walked out on strike; she said they left their colleagues and other prison support staff unprotected, left the incarcerated people to their own devices, and risked the safety of the communities around the prisons.

“There could have been an escape, the communities at large could have been in danger,” she said. “That’s what we had to deal with for 22 days, and to say that we’re going to forget, I will never forget that. They’re not ever working for the state of New York.”

Hochul noted that they’re being removed from the state Police and Peace Officer Registry, where disciplinary, training and service-related records are kept for all law enforcement in New York.

With that, the COs will have to re-do all their training and licensing before being restored as a law enforcement officer again.

“When anyone is fired, this could be a DEC police officer, you’re fired for cause, the process begins to remove your police officer status, which allows you to secure the gun, that can be renewed,” she said.

It’s not clear if the Governor has any intention to move to block those COs from working in the county jails specifically; sources with knowledge of a conversation between the governor’s office and the Sheriff’s Association said that on Monday, the governor had told the sheriffs she could move to block those COs from going back to work in a jail setting by restricting the certifications they can re-acquire. In that case, those COs would only be able to work as sheriff’s deputies or patrol officers.

A spokesperson for Hochul’s office only pointed back to the Governor’s comments from Tuesday morning when asked to clarify.

State Republican lawmakers, who have aligned themselves entirely with the COs over the illegal, not-union-sanctioned strike, have been criticizing the governor for a week over her order barring any state or local government offices from hiring fired COs. Just Tuesday, the state Senate Republican conference sent a letter to Hochul requesting that she backtrack on the hiring ban.

“We believe this executive order I punitive and will only have a ripple effect, impacting not only the 2,000 correction officers but also the members of the National Guard that must continue to serve in our state prisons,” the letter reads.

The Republicans said that the ongoing deployment of thousands of National Guard troops has had profound negative implications for those servicemembers, with reports in the media that they’re living in stark, unsanitary and poor conditions and continue to be deployed under a state order that provides lower pay and none of the benefits that a federal deployment offers.

“Because you have not asked the federal government to mobilize our Guard under Title 10, they continue to not be entitled to the same benefits, protections and comprehensive health care coverage as our active military members,” the letter reads.

Some Republicans have also requested that Hochul extend the timeline for striking COs to return to work, to rescind the firings for at least a little more time to give more officers a chance to return to the state prisons. That seems unlikely at this point, and now the state has started to look to rebuild its CO ranks with new hires and consolidation of prison facilities.