Legislature(2001 - 2002)
05/03/2002 01:44 PM Senate JUD
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* first hearing in first committee of referral
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
+ teleconferenced
= bill was previously heard/scheduled
HB 498-CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES
MR. JOHN MANLY, representing the House Finance Committee, which
sponsored HB 498, said the bill would authorize the Department of
Corrections (DOC) to enter into a contract for a privately
operated 1,000-bed prison in Whittier. He said the State would
contract for those beds over a 25-year period. HB 498 would also
authorize the expansion of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Correctional
Center (YKCC) in Bethel by 96 beds for a cost of $19 million to
be financed through certificates of participation.
SENATOR COWDERY asked about housing for staff.
MR. MANLY said there is a housing problem in Whittier. He
anticipated that housing would be built for staff or staff would
commute from Anchorage. He said the Department of Transportation
& Public Facilities has agreed to keep the Whittier Tunnel open
17 hours each day if the prison is built in Whittier, which would
cover the three shift changes.
SENATOR COWDERY asked if the prison would be built on private
land or city-owned land.
MR. MANLY said it would be built on land leased to Whittier by
the Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC).
SENATOR THERRIAULT asked about water, sewer, electrical and other
infrastructure needs.
MR. MANLY said Whittier believes it has utilities covered because
it has adequate power from Chugach Electric Association, Inc.
(Chugach) and wells to provide water. He said the prison would
have an onsite sewage treatment plant.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Frank Smith to provide testimony.
MR. FRANK SMITH said he has a 30-year background in the field of
criminal justice. He said the proposed prison makes less sense
than the prison that was proposed in Kenai. He said the prison
in Whittier is similar to the prison that was proposed in
Wrangell but far less feasible. Representative Andrew Halcro
wrote an opinion piece in the Anchorage Daily News that said the
proposal made no sense unless you looked at the money trail. He
said it doesn't make fiscal sense to spend an extra $18 million
per year to move prisoners to Whittier.
MR. SMITH said it would be impossible to staff a prison in
Whittier because nobody would be able to get there. Downtown
Anchorage is 65 miles from Whittier and there is often a half-
hour wait at the tunnel because it is only one-way. Staffing was
a significant challenge at the Spring Creek Correctional Center
(SCCC) in Seward, which has much easier access than Whittier.
He said HB 498 doesn't make sense because the State would be
required to pay whether or not the prison ever housed a prisoner.
He said five years would be committed to building costs and
building costs have never been specified because there has never
been an economic analysis of the project. He noted that the
building costs killed a private prison proposal in Delta
Junction.
MR. SMITH expressed concern that the people pushing for HB 498
might have taken money from contractors through contractual work
and that HB 498 makes less sense than any proposal he has heard
in his 14 years of knowledge of Alaskan legislation.
SENATOR COWDERY asked how much money the State spent housing
prisoners in Arizona.
MR. FRANK SMITH said the state spent $51 to $57 per day per bed.
He said there were extra charges for transportation and medical
care but those charges would be the same in Whittier. He said
the Whittier prison would cost more than the economic feasibility
study projected for the Delta Junction private prison proposal.
SENATOR COWDERY asked how much money the State has spent in
Arizona.
MR. FRANK SMITH thought it was approximately $16 million per
year.
SENATOR COWDERY asked if he thought that money was better spent
in Arizona rather than Alaska.
MR. SMITH said it would make more sense to spend $16 million in
Whittier than Arizona. He pointed out that twice that amount
would be spent in Whittier at a prison they wouldn't be able to
staff because of poor pay and training.
SENATOR COWDERY asked how he knew that.
MR. SMITH said he had read virtually every article written on
private prisons in the past five years and has just finished a
chapter on Native Americans in private prisons for a publisher.
He assured Senator Cowdery that he knows the subject and has
demonstrated it time after time in debates and testimony.
SENATOR COWDERY asked why he thought access to Seward was easier
than Whittier.
MR. SMITH said Seward doesn't have the problems related to the
wait to use the tunnel and Seward has far more housing. He said
SCCC was a larger prison. He said a Wyoming study concluded that
a community of 9,000 couldn't support a prison of the size
proposed in Whittier. He said Whittier has an annual population
of about 130 people, many of whom are retired. He said, at the
most, 10 people in Whittier could be potential employees for the
prison. He said HB 498 would be nothing but welfare for
Whittier, which he thought received enough welfare.
SENATOR COWDERY asked why employees wouldn't be able to commute
from larger cities.
MR. SMITH said the pay range that was suggested was between $8.50
and $13 per hour. People in South Anchorage and Girdwood would
probably not want to work at the prison and people from downtown
Anchorage would have to drive 65 miles twice per day to make
barely over minimum wage.
SENATOR COWDERY was sure they would raise the wages if they
couldn't get employees.
MR. SMITH wasn't sure that would happen. He said the State would
be in a peculiar position because the proposed contract was a
pay-for-pay contract. He said the request for qualifications
(RFQ) was the same RFQ that was used in the Wrangell private
prison proposal. The company would be protected under the RFQ.
Whittier would be charged for start-up costs if the Legislature
passed HB 498 and the Governor vetoed it. He said Mr. Frank
Prewitt cited $3.5 million for startup costs.
SENATOR COWDERY said he had two boats in Whittier and could be on
either one of them from South Anchorage in an hour and a half
from his house and out enjoying Prince William Sound. He didn't
think access was a problem.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mayor Ben Butler to provide testimony.
MAYOR BEN BUTLER, City of Whittier, said unlike the rest of the
communities that proposed private prisons, the community of
Whittier supports a prison; the City made sure of that before
going to the State or a contractor. He said they held public
hearings and had petitions circulated. Approximately 80% to 85%
of the people in Whittier supported the proposal. He pointed out
that nobody from Whittier had testified against HB 498.
He said the infrastructure needs of a large prison were already
in Whittier. Chugach put in a large power line that supplies 25
megawatts of power. The community uses 15% of the available power
and would use 50% with the prison. Natural gas comes into
Whittier and there is plenty of water. An onsite sewage treatment
plant would be built with the prison.
MAYOR BUTLER said Whittier was able to learn from the experiences
of the last two communities that had proposed a private prison.
The procurement method was done through the Perkins Coie law firm
in Anchorage. He said they sent out an RFQ, to which five
companies responded. He said an independent team, consisting of
a building construction consultant from Anchorage, a certified
public accountant firm and a resident of Whittier, reviewed the
proposals. The City Council picked Cornell Corrections (Cornell).
He said there was no appeal to that decision so they felt the
process was done fairly.
SENATOR COWDERY said Whittier's population increased in the
summer. He asked whether the vendors commuted from Anchorage or
lived in Whittier during the summer.
MAYOR BUTLER said there is a little bit of both. Access was
reasonable because the tunnel was open 17 hours per day in the
summer. He said quite a few vendors lived in Girdwood and
commuted every day. Half of the schoolteachers also lived in
Girdwood and commuted, even with the tunnel only open 68 hours
per week in the winter. He said the tunnel issues were not as
serious as stated.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked how many companies competed for the
project.
MAYOR BUTLER said the City of Whittier sent out five RFQs. One
company didn't respond at all and two other companies decided not
to respond. He said the two companies that did respond were
Cornell and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the company
that housed the prisoners in Arizona.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mayor Victor Wellington, Sr. to provide
testimony.
MAYOR VICTOR WELLINGTON, SR., Mayor of the Metlakatla Indian
Community, asked that request for proposal (RFP) permission be
put into HB 498. He said Metlakatla was interested in building a
prison yet he heard in committee meetings that Whittier was the
only community interested in building a prison. That is not the
case; Metlakatla officials discussed the possibility with DOC,
legislators and experts in Washington, D.C. He said Metlakatla
has the infrastructure to support a prison. A new road is being
built between Metlakatla and Ketchikan, which would increase the
workforce and a new medical facility is being built. He said it
would be good public policy to include RFP permission to make the
option available to every community.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Frank Prewitt to provide testimony.
MR. FRANK PREWITT said he was a consultant for Cornell and the
City of Whittier on the proposed prison project. He addressed a
handout that showed a snapshot of DOC's inmate population in
February 2002. He said each red block in the graph represented a
day in the month in which the prison was operating over emergency
capacity. He said every prison in the state was operating at or
near maximum capacity. He said the graph did not show the 600
prisoners in Arizona. He then addressed a handout that had been
taken from the DOC website showing growth in prison populations.
DOC experienced a steady upward growth in prison populations
since the early 1980s. He said DOC was adding 150 to 200
prisoners per year at an average growth rate of 4%. He wasn't
aware of any changes in law or demographics that would change
that upward trend.
SENATOR COWDERY asked what the difference was between soft and
hard beds.
2:25 p.m.
MR. PREWITT said a hard bed was a jail or prison bed. A soft bed
was in a privately owned correctional residential center, also
known as a halfway house. He noted that 80% of the prisoners are
felons. He said 4,280 hard beds would be needed in Alaska
prisons by the year 2005, leaving the system roughly 1,380 beds
short. He said there was no question that there was a serious
need for in-state beds. He said the State could deal with the
problem by sending its prisoners to Arizona; that would be less
costly. He said Senator Cowdery made a good point about whether
that money could be better spent in the state circulating in the
local economy.
MR. PREWITT addressed another handout that compared HB 498 to
Senator Green's SB 231 and the Governor's SB 336. He said SB 231
and SB 336 were basically variations on the same theme seeking to
expand existing State correctional facilities throughout the
state by roughly 1,100 beds in SB 231 and 1,200 beds in SB 336.
He said HB 498 would add 1,000 beds in one site.
He addressed a handout that showed the prison population on March
25, 2002, which showed sentenced and un-sentenced prisoners in
DOC facilities. He said sentenced and un-sentenced prisoners
were being combined under one roof throughout the state.
He said there were regional jails at statehood and sentenced
felons were housed outside the state in federal bureau prisons.
He said a jail was a prison to hold offenders after their arrest
through their trial and sentencing. At that point, they needed
to be transferred to a prison that addressed their security and
program needs. He said regional jails worked well until the
Cleary v. State of Alaska lawsuit in the early 1980s. Part of
the Cleary lawsuit ended up as a settlement agreement between the
State and the prisoner plaintiffs to bring sentenced prisoners in
the federal bureau prisons back to Alaska.
MR. PREWITT said the regional jails lacked the economy of scale
to be cost-effective and lacked the resources to be program-
effective. He said a prisoner serving a 10 to 15-year sentence
should come out of prison with some semblance of a behavioral
change and should be in a prison close to mental health,
substance abuse, vocational training and educational resources.
He said there were barely enough of those resources in the
communities available for the public, let alone prisoners.
He said 1,400 of the prisoners in Alaska were Native Alaskans.
While 6% of the general population was Native Alaskan, 37% of the
prison population was Native Alaskan. He said these individuals
needed the opportunity to try to break the recidivism cycle and
spreading the services throughout the state couldn't provide that
opportunity. He said that wasn't cost-effective or program-
effective.
He said the Whittier prison would make room in regional jails.
He said the prison would have enough economy of scale to offer
services in a cost-effective fashion and be close enough to
resources to be able to deliver effective programming and involve
the various regional corporate entities such as Southcentral
Foundation in the delivery of programs.
He addressed a handout that compared the economic impact of HB
498 to SB 231 and SB 336. SB 336 would increase the operating
budget by $35 million and the capital budget by $16.8 million for
a total of $51.8 million per year. SB 231 would increase the
operating budget by $29.5 million and the capital budget by $14.5
million for a total of $44 million per year. HB 498 would
increase the operating budget alone by $14.2 million, including
capital.
He said the bottom of the handout showed a cost per day per bed
comparison of the three bills. SB 231 and SB 336 would carry the
average cost of $114 per day per bed. There would also be an
amortized daily capital rate of $36 per day per bed for a total
of $152 per day per bed. He said HB 498 would cost between $89
and $91 per day per bed. He said HB 498 would set a ceiling on
the Whittier prison whereby both capital and operation would have
to be provided for 18% to 20% less than the statewide average.
He said HB 498 would mean a $59 per day per bed savings to the
State.
TAPE 02-24, SIDE B
2:30 p.m.
MR. PREWITT said the Whittier plan would cost more than leaving
the prisoners in Arizona. The total operating costs of the
Whittier prison would be $32 million dollars, which is $14
million more than was being spent in Arizona. There would be
many benefits to the state if the prisoners were in Whittier;
there would be approximately 325 union jobs and over 200
permanent jobs, as well as indirect jobs.
He said HB 498 was the best of the three bills because Whittier
is situated on a deep-water port where materials could be shipped
in inexpensively. Also, Whittier is situated near Anchorage with
a population of 250,000 to 300,000 and available contractors and
programs. Thousands of people commute from Wasilla and Palmer to
Anchorage every day. Whittier is approximately the same distance
from Anchorage and people could commute there as well.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked if there were any questions for Mr.
Prewitt. There were none. He asked Mr. Charles Campbell to
provide testimony.
MR. CHARLES CAMPBELL said he was a former Director of
Corrections. He believed that legislators knew that HB 498 is a
bad idea and that SB 231 is a superior approach to addressing
Alaska's prison bed space problems. He said the committee should
table HB 498 and allow the Legislature to move forward with a
responsible solution to the problem for the sake of efficiency.
He thought that HB 498 probably appealed to some members of the
committee because the initial costs would be less than SB 231.
He said it would be a matter of unwise expediency to pass HB 498
because it would be putting an important law enforcement and
social service function at risk at the urging of a group of
people with heavy financial stakes in the proposition rather than
being guided by knowledgeable experts. He said the future costs
could be enormous.
Having worked in various roles in the field of corrections for
over 50 years, he believes a 1,000-bed prison in Whittier is a
very bad idea. He doubted the committee could find another
corrections professional, current or retired, who didn't agree
with him unless they had some financial stake in the proposition.
MR. CAMPBELL said Whittier is very inaccessible. Staff would be
marginally qualified and inexperienced with no law enforcement
backup. Cornell would have a difficult time recruiting a staff
of qualified and competent line officers and an even harder time
keeping them. He said a new report in The Corrections Yearbook
indicated that the annual staff turnover rate in private prisons
across the country was 53% and the staff turnover rate in public
prisons was 16%.
He said the Whittier prison would be a $100 million embarrassment
and it could also be a legal problem. He said the legal
principles behind the Cleary case were alive and well. The
Constitution of the State of Alaska requires correctional
administration based on principles of reformation. He didn't
think Cornell had given serious thought to the principles of
reformation.
He disagreed with Mr. Prewitt's comment that Whittier would be
the best place for the State to center its correctional efforts
such as education, therapy, Native culture programs and
vocational programs. The lack of community resources in Whittier
would make it impossible to have an effective correctional
program and the large size of the prison would make it even worse
because large facilities do not work half as well as smaller
facilities. He said the main concern was bringing prisoners back
from Arizona.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked if Mr. Campbell really believed anybody
cared about that. He didn't think people cared. He thought the
prisoners were going to stay in Arizona as long as it was cheaper
for them to be there. He said anybody who tried to build a
prison or tried to do anything in Alaska would encounter advisory
votes or organized labor and contractors would fight about it.
He said the prisoners would still be in Arizona but there would
be more of them. He said if he listened to Representative Andrew
Halcro, Alaska should put out a bid for Mexico and Afghanistan.
He said if we sent the prisoners far enough and treated them bad
enough they could be housed for practically nothing. He asked if
Mr. Campbell really believed something would be put together in
the state.
MR. CAMPBELL said 95% of the people in Alaska prisons and the
Arizona prison were going to be released back into the community
so it makes sense to work with them and try to make them less
likely to commit further crimes. He said nothing would be worse,
in terms of good correctional principles, than to have a 1,000-
bed for-profit private prison in Whittier. He said Whittier was
hardly better than Arizona in terms of accessibility for many of
the prisoners' families.
SENATOR COWDERY didn't agree that Whittier is inaccessible. He
said he lived in Anchorage and had been to Whittier as many as
three times in one day.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR hoped there was some way to find a solution to
bring all the points made to some sort of balance. He hoped they
really were concerned about bringing prisoners home from Arizona.
MR. CAMPBELL said he had worked in seven different federal
prisons and had been in charge of all of the prisons in Alaska.
He couldn't recall one prison where there wasn't staff that lived
close enough to be able to assemble an emergency crew in five
minutes. He said the hour and a half Senator Cowdery spoke of
was too long a time in an emergency situation.
SENATOR COWDERY said he was only speaking in terms of access.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. David Katzeek to provide testimony.
2:41 p.m.
MR. DAVID KATZEEK, Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) Camp #2, spoke
in Tlingit throughout his testimony and translated it into
English. He thanked the committee for allowing him to share a
serious, important and emotional issue for the Native peoples.
He said his grandparents and ancestors said the most powerful
thing human beings can do is work together for the good of one
another. He said HB 498 was an opportunity to be able to bring
private industry, government, Native communities and other
interested parties together to restore families, rehabilitate
individuals, make the public safe, reduce recidivism and reduce
the costs of prison care.
He said ANB Camp #2 was concerned about the issue because 70 to
80 of their people would be incarcerated in the next year. He
said somebody was making money off of their people, whether it
was a private prison or the State of Alaska. He said the whole
picture needed to be looked at.
He said they went to Cornell because they had an opportunity.
They worked with the City of Hoonah, DOC, the Tlingit-Haida
Central Council, the Alaska Federation of Natives, the Department
of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice and many
others to work toward resolving problems on their own. He said
the committee had the opportunity to practice good leadership by
making decisions that were very difficult and sometimes not very
popular in public opinion.
MR. KATZEEK finished by saying, "Have you heard the cry of a
little boy who misses his daddy? Do you hear the crying of a
little girl?" He said that was really what it was all about. He
said it wasn't easy for him to sit in front of the committee and
talk about something as difficult and emotional as this issue.
He said part of the healing of the Native community was to be
able to say they wanted to help.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked if there were any questions for Mr.
Katzeek. There were none. He asked Ms. Margot Knuth to provide
testimony.
MS. MARGOT KNUTH, Strategic Planning Coordinator, DOC, said DOC
had concerns about HB 498. DOC uses four factors by which it
measures legislative proposals that address correctional
facilities:
· Is it safe;
· Does it meet the State's need for prison and jail beds;
· Is it within the structure of the government or government
relationship; and
· Is it cost-effective?
She said HB 498 failed on all four standards. She said HB 498
was not the best of the three private prison proposals to come
before the legislature; it was the worst.
She said Whittier is a difficult location for that size of a
prison. It has a population of 182 people. Adequate fire and
police protection are necessary for a large prison and Whittier
has neither. Whittier does have power and water, which is a good
start and land could be rented from ARRC. Whittier does not have
an adequate sewage treatment plant for such a large prison. It
would cost $4 million to build a new sewage treatment plant for
the prison alone or $9 million to expand Whittier's existing
sewage treatment plant. She said there were some significant
infrastructure costs to be considered. In addition, housing would
have to be provided for staff, educators, substance abuse
counselors, clergy and medical staff for the prison. She said
they would probably have to commute from Anchorage since there
wasn't any housing.
MS. KNUTH didn't believe that Whittier has the capability of
government to be responsible for the operation of a prison. She
said Whittier had never bonded a project, let alone one of this
magnitude. She said the bonding would require a level of
sophistication Whittier does not have and the prison would cost
at least $110 million.
She said a private company usually built private prisons and then
opened its doors for business and negotiated a daily cost with
interested clients. She said the cost for 700 Alaska prisoners
in Arizona was $57 per day per bed. She said Alaska was able to
change the rate and the number of prisoners depending upon needs
and market pressures. She said there is an excess of private
prison bed space in the United States and the daily rates were
falling. She said the opening of the Anchorage jail created an
additional 200 in-state beds, which reduced the number of Arizona
prisoners to 600. DOC was in the process of negotiating daily
rates for those prisoners and expected to agree to about $53 per
day per bed or $11.6 million per year. She said every dollar per
day per bed represents $250,000 in Alaska's operating budget.
2:47 p.m.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked if she thought the State could get a better
deal if the prisoners went to New Mexico, Mexico or Afghanistan.
MS. KNUTH said there were significantly cheaper options than
Arizona. She said housing the prisoners in Arizona was a
compromise between appropriate care for inmates and cost. She
said DOC had monitors at the Arizona prison. The contract with
Arizona is fairly strict in the needs for inmates. She said
Alaska requires greater programming and higher staffing ratios
than any other CCA clients in the United States because they
expected better treatment.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked why.
MS. KNUTH said that is the personal commitment of DOC. Other
prisoners housed in Arizona were U.S. Marshall's inmates and
inmates from Hawaii, Montana and Washington, D.C. The Alaskan
representatives worked with the representatives of the other
inmate populations and were aware of how many hours other
jurisdictions spent working with CCA and what their programming
requirements were. She said Alaska had the greatest presence.
She said the only client that was charged more was the federal
government for some of its inmates.
MS. KNUTH said the proposal for a private prison in Whittier
would cost $32.8 million per year for 25 years. She said DOC
only paid for occupied beds in Arizona and could withdraw its
prisoners at any time and stop paying. She said HB 498 calls for
a 25-year commitment to $90 per day for 1,000 beds, regardless of
whether all the beds are occupied or not and that doesn't make
economic sense.
She disputed Mr. Prewitt's representation that DOC facilities
were over capacity. She said that was probably true on the day
that the snapshot was taken but since that time, the Anchorage
jail opened and increased total capacity by over 250 beds. She
said DOC was at approximately 95% capacity statewide. Two
facilities were over capacity that week because of logistics
problems in transportation. DOC could house the Arizona prisoners
in the Whittier prison, but that would only occupy 600 of the
1,000 beds. She understood building for the future but cautioned
against speculating too high. She said DOC experienced a growth
rate of 200 prisoners per year during some years but there had
been no growth in the previous two years.
She said SB 336 proposed regional expansion, which is needed
because of the pretrial population and short-term misdemeanants
that only spend a short period of time in the system.
Approximately 33,000 people were booked into the system each year
but only 5,000 of them were retained at any given time. She said
most of these people couldn't go through the prison in Arizona,
Whittier, SCCC or the Palmer Correctional Center (PCC) because
they needed to be housed close to their courts. There were also
long-term felons who needed to be in a prison with programs, such
as SCCC, PCC and Wildwood Correctional Center. She said there is
a need for 1,200 beds but not in one location.
SENATOR COWDERY asked about the town where the prison in Arizona
was located.
MS. KNUTH said Florence is about an hour and a half outside of
Phoenix and has a population of approximately 60,000.
SENATOR COWDERY asked if Florence has public water and sewer
facilities.
MS. KNUTH said it does, as well as adequate law enforcement and
fire departments.
SENATOR COWDERY asked if the prison is inside city limits.
MS. KNUTH said it is. She noted that Florence is the largest
prison town in the United States.
She said the contract proposed in HB 498 represented about $820
million. She said Mr. Prewitt compared the Whittier estimate of
$90 per day to the DOC average of $150 per day. She said the
$150 also includes $32 for major medical coverage, transportation
costs and administrative costs. She said the proper comparison
would be $150 per day per bed spent in DOC facilities to $122 per
day per bed in Whittier. She noted that the State wouldn't own
the prison after the 25-year contract and ownership would be
worth something. She said the State could build and operate a
single prison for the same amount of money or less but it doesn't
need one. She said HB 498 proposes a prison in the wrong place
with the wrong type of beds. She said DOC is also concerned
about the lack of a competitive procurement process.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. James Price to provide testimony.
3:00 p.m.
MR. JAMES PRICE believed HB 498 was a bad piece of legislation
and that the statements made in support of HB 498 were incorrect.
He didn't believe it would be cost-efficient or that the State
would see any savings. He believed the location of the prison
would drive costs up.
He said a previous witness said there was a lot of support for HB
498 in Whittier. He said the Kenai Peninsula Borough made the
same claim about its private prison proposal. However, 73% voted
against the proposal with the largest voter turnout of any
borough election. He said there was opposition throughout the
large borough so he didn't think it was a "not-in-my-backyard"
issue.
He argued that the Whittier proposal was worse than the Kenai
proposal and believes that the lack of local opposition was due
to the fact that there was no provision in the city code to allow
for a vote of the people. He said people were reluctant to
oppose the Kenai proposal because of the political ramifications
of speaking out against a project supported by local politicians.
He said that was probably also the case in Whittier.
He also expressed concern about the sole-source contract because
Cornell got the contract without really having to go through a
competitive bidding process. He said the City of Whittier was
going to own the prison and he didn't understand why they
wouldn't want to put the project out for bid to bring costs down.
MR. PRICE had 18 pages of summary detailing the failures of
private prisons in general and Cornell in particular. He said it
was interesting that auditors were already looking at Cornell for
possible conflicts in violation of the Security and Exchange
Commission rules. He said Cornell's financial problems could
cause difficulties in their management of a private prison in
Whittier.
He urged the committee to kill HB 498.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Ms. Elsie Hendryx to provide testimony.
MS. ELSIE HENDRYX, Kenai Native Association (KNA), supported HB
498 and urged the committee to support the bill. She said KNA
wanted to get their people back into Alaska and Whittier was not
that far away from Anchorage. She believed inmates would be
closer to their families, which would help the recidivism rate
with the Native people.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Ron Wilson to provide testimony.
MR. RON WILSON said he had been a correctional officer with DOC
for almost 19 years but the opinions he was expressing were his
own. He first had contact with private prisons when he worked in
Nome and Cornell wanted to place a halfway house next to the high
school. The people of Nome decided that wasn't a good idea. He
said communities in Alaska, such as Delta Junction, Kenai and
Wrangell, decided private prisons were not a good idea. He
wondered what kind of rules Cornell had to play by. He said if
they were playing baseball they would have struck out already; if
they were playing basketball they would have been penalized for a
flagrant foul when they sued Delta Junction for $1 million. He
said despite all this Cornell was still in the game.
He knew how Cornell operated. He used the following analogy to
demonstrate:
They'll come into your town; come in with their
corporate aircraft, their big cars, their big wallets
and promise you a trip to the moon. And while they're
wining and dining you and doing everything else, once
they have the contract with all the i's dotted and the
t's crossed and it's so iron clad that the turrets are
actually bleeding, they'll set you out front and you'll
be looking down the road and Jethro Bodean from the
Beverly Hillbillies will be coming down the road with
his truck and pick you up and he will be taking you to
the moon. Now the only place you'll be ending up is
the Valley of the Moon Park [ph.] in Anchorage and then
he'll tell you you have to get your own ride home.
MR. WILSON said private prisons were not a good idea and most of
the communities that had been presented with the proposal of a
private prison agreed. He said SB 231 would help prisoners by
increasing the size of prisons in local communities and
increasing revenues in local communities. He had the opportunity
to observe Native prison populations reacting with people from
their community when he worked in Nome. He said even the most
obstinate Native prisoner would lose their tough demeanor in the
presence of an elder. He said putting prisoners close to their
own communities could only help in their rehabilitation.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Jim LeCrone to provide testimony.
MR. JIM LECRONE, Public Safety Employees Association (PSEA),
wanted to coin a new term, "situational accessibility." He said
Mayor Butler mentioned that half of the teachers in Whittier
commuted. He suspected that it wasn't a major emergency if a
teacher missed a day of school because of bad weather. He worked
with DOC several years previously and there was a landslide that
closed the highway between Anchorage and Seward for five days.
He said most people who worked at the Seward prison commuted on a
weekly basis. He said the relief crew was prevented from getting
to Seward because of the landslide. He said that was not a bad
situation because enough people lived in Seward to maintain the
security at SCCC. He said that was "situational accessibility."
He said a crew couldn't be expected to be on duty more than 24
hours maintaining security control over 1,000 inmates.
He had never heard Cornell address the Alaska Police Standards
Council (APSC) requirements for certifying correctional officers.
He said Alaska statute mandates that all correctional officers
must meet APSC standards, which is a lengthy process of training,
psychological evaluations and background evaluations. He expected
the legislature to hold Cornell to the same standard but
suspected it would raise their labor costs significantly. He
urged the committee to let HB 498 die. He said SB 231 and SB 336
were much better bills.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Rick VanHatten to provide testimony.
MR. RICK VANHATTEN, Alaska Correctional Officers, said he was a
16-year correctional officer and president of the Alaska
Correctional Officers chapter of PSEA. He was speaking
personally and on behalf of the 735 correctional officers in the
state. He didn't want to repeat the points that had already been
made. He said SB 231 was the best bill for DOC and the
communities.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. Brad Wilson to provide testimony.
MR. BRAD WILSON, PSEA, said PSEA represented the Alaska State
Troopers, police departments and correctional officers. He said
PSEA was opposed to HB 498. He said the committee should support
SB 231 if they were concerned about the recidivism rate. He said
spreading prisoners throughout the state would allow them to be
in their own communities with their own community support. He
said that reduced recidivism.
He said Cornell said their officers would meet APSC standards.
He asked why anyone who could meet APSC standards would work in
Whittier with the long commute and less money if they could work
for DOC with a 20-year retirement program, benefits and better
pay. He said DOC was hiring and had positions that had not been
filled.
He was involved in the private prison proposals in Anchorage,
Delta Junction, Kenai and Wrangell. He said in every case the
local government said they didn't need a vote because their
people were 85% in support of it. He said that always turned out
to be wrong when it did go to a vote. He said the same argument
was being used for Whittier. He said PSEA did everything they
could to get a vote in Whittier. He said if Mayor Butler was so
sure that 85% of the community was in support of the prison, he
would have a vote. He said polling and petitions could be
subjective because they were given by supporters of the prison
who presented a one-sided story. He agreed with Representative
Eric Croft's statement that HB 498 was not about a private
prison; it was about powerful people putting money into the
pockets of one corporation. He said we were better than that and
we needed to say no.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR said the committee moved SB 231 out of committee
about two and a half weeks previously. He asked Ms. Dee Hubbard
to provide testimony.
MS. DEE HUBBARD said she was a mother from Sterling. She asked
the committee not to vote HB 498 out of committee. She said Mr.
Prewitt emailed an RFQ to the city manager of Whittier on October
rd
23. She said it was the same RFQ that was to be used in
Wrangell. She said Mr. Prewitt also emailed a list of companies
to send the RFQ to because the city manager didn't know who to
send it to. She said a number of communities were "being asked
to jump through the Cornell hoops with Mr. Prewitt giving them as
much information as he possibly could to help them." She said it
was odd that Mr. Prewitt, who represented Cornell, gave Whittier
an RFQ for Cornell to respond to.
She had found nine permits that Cornell would have to apply for
and satisfy; some of which could be very costly. She said the
incinerator could cost $5 to $10 million. She said no one knew
what the project would cost because no feasibility study was
required. She said there was a big difference between building a
prison in Anchorage and building a prison in Whittier. For
example, a prison in Whittier would need to be built to withstand
a 200-pound per square foot roof load. She said that was a lot
more concrete and steel than was used in Anchorage.
She spoke to an analysis she had given committee members and said
Cornell and Whittier expected to have some costs reimbursed
through bonds. She said the mayor had been living in Juneau for
three weeks with Cornell covering those costs.
TAPE 02-25, SIDE A
3:18 p.m.
MS. HUBBARD said Sec. 7 of HB 498 appeared to bundle the YKCC and
Whittier projects together.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked Mr. John Duffy to provide testimony.
MR. JOHN DUFFY, Manager, Matanuska-Susitna (Mat-Su) Borough, said
SB 231 was the borough's preference. He agreed with Senator
Cowdery's statement that Alaskan dollars needed to remain in
Alaska to provide economic opportunities for Alaska residents and
contractors.
He said the Whittier prison would cost $89 to $91 per day per
bed. He said other facilities have comparable costs, if not
less, i.e. PCC costs $58 per day per bed. He passed out a
handout that showed the costs of correctional facilities in the
state and noted that other facilities also cost less than the
Whittier proposal.
MR. DUFFY said the capital costs associated with the Whittier
prison would need to be scrutinized closely. The sewage treatment
prison could cost between $4 million and $9 million according to
DEC estimates. Electrical power was available but a substation
would be needed to connect it to the prison, which would cost
$500,000 to $750,000.
He said there are also other reasons to support the regional
approach. Unemployment rates throughout the state are very high:
7.7% in the Mat-Su and Ketchikan Gateway Boroughs; 9.6% in the
Kenai Peninsula Borough; and 10.6% in Bethel. He said most of
the workers for the Whittier prison would commute from Anchorage,
where there was a 4.3% unemployment rate. The Mat-Su Borough felt
the economic benefits of prison expansion should be shared
throughout the state. He passed out a memo from Northern
Economics that estimated the effects of prison expansion as
detailed in SB 231. He said the regional approach would result in
approximately 300 jobs in Ketchikan, 200 jobs in Fairbanks and
over 1,000 jobs each in the Mat-Su and Kenai. He said SB 231
would share the economic impacts of prison expansion throughout
the state.
He believed providing a regional approach would help
rehabilitation rates because prisoners would be located closer to
their families and networks.
SENATOR THERRIAULT informed the committee that he was not going
to propose an amendment to include language for PCC in HB 498
because it would trigger a title change.
SENATOR ELLIS proposed Amendment 1 to delete Sec. 7. He said
there was progress earlier in the process to disengage the
Whittier and YKCC projects and the deletion of Sec. 7 would
ensure that the two weren't entangled.
SENATOR THERRIAULT asked who brought the amendment to Senator
Ellis and why legislative drafters didn't draft it.
SENATOR ELLIS said he believed Senator Hoffman's staff drafted it
in consultation with legislative drafters.
SENATOR THERRIAULT said Sec. 7 made it appear that nothing would
happen at YKCC unless the Whittier proposal went forward.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR objected to the motion for the purpose of a roll
call vote.
Upon a roll call vote, Senator Ellis voted in favor of Amendment
1 and Senators Cowdery and Therriault and Chairman Taylor voted
against Amendment 1. Therefore, Amendment 1 failed to be adopted
by a vote of one to three.
SENATOR COWDERY moved CSHB 498(FIN) am out of committee with
attached fiscal notes and individual recommendations.
SENATOR ELLIS objected. He strongly supported the regional
approach proposed in SB 231. He would rather see money invested
in vocational and technical education, other education programs,
other alternatives in diversion programs and rehabilitation at
other levels than new prisons. He said more prison space is
needed but there was no contest between HB 498 and SB 231.
CHAIRMAN TAYLOR asked if there was any further discussion. There
was none.
Upon a roll call vote, Senators Cowdery and Therriault and
Chairman Taylor voted in favor of moving CSHB 498(FIN) am out of
committee and Senator Ellis voted against moving CSHB 498(FIN) am
out of committee. Therefore, CSHB 498(FIN) am moved out of
committee by a vote of three to one with attached fiscal notes
and individual recommendations.
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