Recently, the governor announced his plans to give imprisoned criminals a free college education paid by law-abiding taxpayers like you and me. This policy is out of touch with hardworking New Yorkers.

The governor says his plan will save taxpayer money by reducing recidivism and won’t cost that much per prisoner, but I find this hard to believe. Certainly it is costly to house inmates, and I’d prefer that they not return to the system after their prison terms end, but paying for their college education isn’t going to be cheap. The governor has been citing a very low figure of $5,000 per inmate, but that was the cost of the program when it was abolished 20 years ago. It should be noted that 20 years ago, prisoners were housed for $30,000 a year and now that cost is $60,000 a year.

I think that fact alone should tell you that the governor’s numbers are unrealistic.

Aside from the cost of this misguided proposal, there is a larger question at hand – should people who break our laws take priority over those who study and work hard? Should rule breakers get a free ride?

When I broached the subject on Facebook, asking taxpayers to join me in fighting the governor and his college-for-cons scheme, they were outraged. Over a short, two-day time period, 8,399 people shared the information I posted about the petition, 795 people ‘liked’ our efforts, and 133 joined the dialogue about this issue. We also had a barrage of phone calls from concerned constituents. Nearly 6,500 people signed our petition telling the governor to abandon this ill-advised plan.

People are not happy.

We understand rehabilitation programs are an important part of our state correctional services. Providing free college to criminals is not the best use of our limited public dollars.

Our state should, instead, invest in programs and services that would help prevent young people from committing crimes in the first place – namely K-12 public education. This is where public dollars would make a real difference.

Our public schools are chronically under funded. The existing school aid formula is unfair to upstate rural schools. Additionally, New York still hasn’t paid back the funding taken from our schools during the 2011-12 budget deficit-eliminating gimmick.

We need to send a clear message to the governor: New York must put our kids before cons.

Join me in my efforts to put kids before cons; sign the petition at https://sites.google.com/site/kidsbeforecons.