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Columbus
Dispatch...
Private
firms get only one prison
State proclaims deal a success; union
workers relieved by news
By Alan Johnson
It
wasn’t what was expected: one state
prison sold instead of five; $72.7 million for state coffers instead of
$200 million; a private prison reverting to state operation.
But
when the smoke cleared from
yesterday’s Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction
announcement, Gov.
John Kasich’s administration seemed satisfied and the union
representing state
employees was relieved.
The
administration said the deal will
save $13 million in annual operating costs overall and add 702 prison
beds to
help ease a critical overcrowding problem. The end result will be three
privately operated prisons, one more than now.
“It
meets the tenets of what we had
established, and that is a platform to reduce violence because we’re
not
reducing beds, we’re not closing prisons,” state prisons director Gary
C. Mohr
said. He called it “an opportunity for our people who are working in
prisons to
continue to work in prisons, some public, some private.”
Christopher
Mabe, the newly elected
president of the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association, said the
outcome was
“a surprise. ... It’s better than we expected.”
“It
gives us hope, hope for the local
communities,” Mabe said.
Democrats
criticized the prison-sale
plan from the start. State Sen. Michael Skindell, D-Lakewood, called
the deal
“a temporary reprieve from the sale of more-valuable state assets.”
Earlier
this year, Kasich proposed
selling five prisons, worth an estimated $200 million, to help ease an
$8
billion budget deficit. By the time the two-year, $55.8 billion budget
was
finalized, the revenue projection had dropped to $50 million.
Here’s
how the deal shakes out:
•
The Lake Erie Correctional
Institution in Conneaut, in Ashtabula County, was sold to the
Corrections
Corporation of America, of Nashville, Tenn., for $72.7 million. The
company
will operate the prison at 8 percent less than the state, saving $3
million
annually.
The
state will pay the company $44.25
per day to house, feed, clothe and provide programs for each inmate and
will
pay a $3.8 million annual “ownership fee” to cover maintenance expenses.
•
The North Central Correctional Institution
and vacant Marion Juvenile Correctional Facility will be operated, but
not
purchased, by Management and Training Corp., of Centerville, Utah,
saving an
estimated $3 million per year, officials said. The state will pay
$41.20 per
day for each inmate.
•
The North Coast Correctional
Treatment Facility in Lorain County will be taken over by the state
after being
managed for the past several years by Management and Training Corp.
Operations
will be merged with the nearby Grafton Correctional Institution, saving
$7
million annually.
A
closed-door bidding and negotiation
process lasting about three months concluded when a seven-member team
of
evaluators from three state agencies decided it “was not in Ohio
taxpayers’
best interest to sell additional prisons at this time.”
State
documents showed Corrections
Corp. offered to pay $100 million for the Lake Erie facility. But the
package
bid also included a $3 million higher “ownership fee” and a $45.86 per
diem,
$1.61 higher than the final negotiated number. Prisons spokesman Carlo
LoParo
said the final package was a better economic deal for the state
although the
purchase price was less.
The
last of the three bidders, GEO
Group Inc. of Boca Raton, Fla., did not get a contract.
Read
it at the Columbus Dispatch
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