Otter relents on private prisons
BOISE – Gov. Butch Otter said Monday he’s abandoned efforts to privatize Idaho’s new prisons, yielding to lawmakers who weren’t ready to let a company control a state correctional facility.
Idaho still needs a new prison, but Otter will accept an arrangement in which the state owns the building and contracts with a company to run it. That’s akin to the existing operation at the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise.
Otter, a former businessman, had since January been trying to sell lawmakers on allowing a private prison company such as Corrections Corp. of America, based in Tennessee, or The GEO Group, of Florida, to build a prison, own it and operate it. But many legislators said they felt a companion proposal that would have allowed companies to bring prisoners to Idaho from other states would mean giving up too much control over a necessary state function.
“I’ve sent them a very strong signal I’m prepared to let that be owned by the state,” Otter said. “One of the things we’re looking at is a lease purchase. I’ve done that many times in the private sector.”
Already this year, the House and Senate passed a lease-purchase agreement in which Idaho will pay $50.4 million over 20 years to a Utah-based company to build a 400-bed drug treatment prison. In 20 years, Idaho will own the building.
Another option would be for the state to sell bonds, much as it did to pay for the ICC facility. Still, Otter has said he fears that could strain financing capacities and put a dent in Idaho’s top-notch rating with credit agencies.
Idaho now wants to build a 1,500-bed prison, smaller than a 2,100-bed facility proposed last year, to help accommodate the 9,400 inmates it expects to have in its system by 2012, up from about 7,400 now, said Brent Reinke, prisons director. He didn’t provide a dollar figure for the smaller prison, although the state estimated the 2,100-bed version would have cost $250 million.
Currently, the agency has prison beds for 6,300 inmates, so it’s shipped about 500 to Texas and Oklahoma, with others housed in county jails across Idaho.
Prison companies had lobbied for Idaho to change its laws to allow for a privately owned, privately run prison to be built and to allow companies to bring inmates from elsewhere to fill vacant beds. CCA and GEO have given at least $40,000 in campaign contributions to Republican lawmakers in recent elections, including at least $15,000 to Otter’s 2006 gubernatorial race.
After learning Otter has retreated from his original private prison plans, some lawmakers who had resisted his arguments said they’re now eager to move ahead with building another state prison that will help bring Idaho inmates home from lockups thousands of miles away.
“I’m delighted with that,” said Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, co-chairwoman of the Joint Finance-Budget Committee. “We do need a new prison.”
Idaho could tap some of the $60 million in a state economic emergency fund to help start the project, Bell said.