Lawmakers Back Delay In Private Prison Opening Corporation Offers Deal They Can’T Refuse

Facing an offer they could not refuse, legislative budget writers have ratified a deal intended to delay opening the new private prison south of Boise until mid-2000.

Corrections Corp. of America has offered concessions that make a six-month delay financially viable. The 1,250-bed facility was scheduled to open next January.

“They’ve worked out arrangements that will be very beneficial to the state in the short term and the long term,” Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, said Monday.

Corrections Corp., which is building the prison and has the contract to run it for the first three years, will pay the costs of mothballing the facility from the time it is completed, probably in September, until the following July.

The company, which manages more inmates than any other private prison company in America, also will pay the transportation costs to move 200 inmates Idaho now has housed in Texas to its own facility in New Mexico, where it has said housing rates are comparable.

In addition, it will pay the cost of transporting to that New Mexico prison additional Idaho inmates who have to be housed out of state because existing facilities are full. And it will pay for bringing all inmates back to Idaho in mid-2000 when the new prison opens.

“I was absolutely surprised,” Sen. Atwell Parry, R-Melba, said after hearing of the company’s offer. “They have really done an outstanding job working it out, and all they said was they’re looking for a long-term relationship.”

The company isn’t hurting for cash. Corporate profits, at more than $60 million last fall, were running over 60 percent ahead of a year earlier.

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s administration does not want to open the new prison until it can fill 750 beds.

Lawmakers had wanted to open it next January to preclude shipping any more inmates out of state and avoid anticipated political criticism for paying out-of-state housing rates when a $50 million Idaho prison stands empty.

Corrections Director Jim Spalding told the budget committee earlier that he expects to have to ship another 200 inmates out of state by May of 2000, if the new prison doesn’t open before then.

But Kempthorne has refused to ease populations in existing facilities just to open the new prison, preferring to ship inmates out of state for a time.

Idaho’s recent experiences with housing prisoners out of state haven’t all been good. In 1997, Idaho inmates rioted at a private prison in Louisiana, and five escaped. One is still on the loose.

Opening the new prison early or shipping more inmates out of state to delay the opening costs the state about the same, analysts said. That made Corrections Corp.’s offer of extra financial assistance - likely hundreds of thousands of dollars - what tipped the scales toward the governor’s proposed delay. Still, some lawmakers remain curious about what the company expects in return.

Staff writer Betsy Z. Russell contributed to this report.