Richard Roesler: Voters could decide whether to put inmates to work
Three years after the state Supreme Court ruled that it’s unconstitutional for companies or nonprofits to use prison-inmate labor, lawmakers want to rewrite that 118-year-old clause of the constitution.
The workers are paid for their time – although more than half of that money can be gobbled up for victim restitution, cost of incarceration, another victim’s fund and a mandatory inmate savings account.
A 2005 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy found that putting inmates to work reduces their likelihood of re-offending upon release. The group calculated the net benefit – in savings to taxpayers and benefits of avoided crime – at about $4,400 per inmate.
Senate Joint Resolution 8212 would ask voters this November to approve amending the state constitution to again allow so-called “Class 1” industries to set up manufacturing or other employment opportunities for offenders in prisons.
For now, prison inmates are still doing work under state-run programs. They make office and classroom furniture, they sew uniforms, make prison mattresses, first aid kids, office nameplates and, yes, half a million license plates a year. They also provide a wide array of institutional food.
“Correctional Industries bake cookies that melt in your mouth,” promises their Web site, washingtonci.com/products/food_ products.asp.
Chinese as a second language
Trying to put the “world” into this session’s much-touted “world-class education” goal for Washington’s kids, more than a dozen lawmakers are backing a pilot project teaching Spanish and Chinese in two elementary schools.
Despite extensive research showing that the younger a student is, the easier it is to acquire a second language, there is now no requirement for elementary schools to teach foreign languages.
Senate Bill 5714 passed the Senate unanimously last month and is now being considered by the House.
Marine Corps and Peace Corps
If military recruiters are able to make a pitch to high schoolers, so should job-training or other service programs.
That’s the rationale behind House Bill 2026, which passed the House early this month and is now working its way through the Senate.
Under federal law, schools accepting federal money must provide military recruiters with high-schoolers’ names, addresses and phone numbers. (A student or parent may opt out, and schools are required to tell them that.)
Interestingly, the law also mandates that school districts give military recruiters the same access they give to colleges or prospective employers.
HB 2026 would provide the same access to representatives of the Job Corps, Peace Corps and AmeriCorps.
Diplomas the hard way
For years, the state has allowed school districts to issue high school diplomas to honorably discharged veterans who left high school before graduating in order to serve in World War II or the Korean War.
State lawmakers are now considering adding Vietnam-era veterans to that list. The House unanimously passed HB 1283 last month, and the Senate held a hearing on the bill Wednesday.
Wanting more watchdog bark
“I don’t want it to be collegial. I want it to be a lot more hostile.”
– Initiative promoter Tim Eyman, on the mutual praise between State Auditor Brian Sonntag and the state Department of General Administration during the first of a long series of new performance audits.
(Despite the mutual admiration, Sonntag’s staff found that the agency had 113 “underused” state vehicles that should be sold or reassigned, that its rental rates to state agencies don’t cover its operating expenses and that the agency should stop financing the vehicles it buys, in order to save millions of dollars in interest.)