Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York took on one of the state’s most powerful special-interest groups when he proposed a commission to determine which of the state’s expensive and underused prisons should be closed. He is in for a tough battle, but it is well worth fighting.
Even a modest closings program like the one proposed by Gov. George Pataki could have saved the state nearly $75 million in the first three years, freeing up money for schools, health care and mass transit. But Mr. Pataki was blocked by the powerful correction officers’ union and by state lawmakers who reap campaign contributions from the union and eagerly do its bidding.

While New York’s prison population has declined sharply since the late 1990s, too many legislators in upstate New York see the prisons as a state-financed jobs program. Some lawmakers are also worried about protecting their own jobs. Some hold office only because their lightly populated districts were deliberately drawn to include prisons that inflate the head count — with nonvoting residents.

Mr. Spitzer will have to press the Legislature to amend the 2005 correction workers protection bill. The law makes it difficult — and expensive — for the state to close a prison whether or not it is still needed. It requires the state to undertake a complex series of studies and consultation and to essentially take financial responsibility for any losses communities may suffer — either from a staff cutback or a prison closing.

The leader of the state correction officers’ union, Lawrence Flanagan Jr., is so sure of his political power that he sounded like some kind of potentate last week, when he told The Times’s Nicholas Confessore that “We’re not open to any closures at this point.” Less crime and fewer inmates should equal a smaller corrections budget — and a larger investment in other vital state services. Mr. Spitzer should press ahead with a plan to close unneeded prisons and the State Legislature should back him, rather than fight him.