After flip-flopping on previous flip-flops, legislators late Friday night added back $8 million in spending to transfer 120 prisoners from Montana to a privately run CoreCivic operation in Arizona.
The idea was first added to the state budget in March, but then 10 days ago the Senate Finance and Claims Committee removed that provision, saying that action taken elsewhere this legislative session should open up bed availability in the state prison system.
Earlier Friday afternoon, however, the same committee attempted to add the spending back, this time to House Bill 817. But the proposal initially failed on a bipartisan 4-15 vote. The committee then advanced the bill, but later in the night came back to reconsider their actions.
House Bill 817 before Friday spent more than $180 million to make improvements to the state prison in Deer Lodge. Legislators Friday evening also voted for an additional $25 million in the bill to build housing that workers at the state prison in Deer Lodge or CoreCivic’s private Montana facility in Shelby could live in. That part of the bill would be void if a different bill proposing money to build housing for workers is passed.
In bringing the second attempt of the day to add the prison contract back into House Bill 817, Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, said the move was because “we looked at this one before but there was some confusion about it.”
The spending was approved on a 10-9 vote with all Democrats on the committee and some Republicans opposed. It is contingent on lawmakers passing another bill that increases the penalty for some property thefts or issuing of bad checks worth more than $1,500 with prison sentences of 10 years. That bill, Senate Bill 95 from Republican Sen. Barry Usher, itself is expected to cost $1.9 million to implement. A fiscal note attached estimates it would touch about 178 offenders based on past data.
That bill has already cleared House and Senate votes and is awaiting further action in the House before it’d go back to the Senate for approval of amendments.
“The thought process behind this is that if we’re going to pass Senate Bill 95 and be putting more of those criminals into prison, then we need space for those criminals to be in, so the two bills are working together,” Glimm said.
Sen. Ryan Lynch, a Butte Democrat, strongly opposed the bill.
“I just want to make sure everybody knows we’re going to give this to a specific company. Is that legal, first of all, in state code? Can we call a company out?” Lynch asked.
Lynch also pointed to language in the contingency section of the amendment that says SB 95 would be void if HB 817 did not appropriate “at least” $3.9 million in each of the next two budget years for the CoreCivic contract.
“Absolutely it looks like we have a blank check to make sure that the private, for-profit, out-of-state correctional enterprises gets whatever backroom deal this thing was cut with,” Lynch said. “I think that Montanans certainly should pay attention.”
CoreCivic has reported spending more than $27,000 on lobbying this legislative session, according to records from the Commissioner of Political Practices.
Sen. John Esp, R-Big Timber, countered that it wasn’t a blank check, and Glimm said the language was there to clarify that a lesser appropriation would not cover the contract cost.
Lynch still said he was concerned about the bill specifying a contractor.
“We went through no procurement process to a private for-profit (prison contractor),” Lynch said. “It’s a minimum, but there’s no maximum on any contract. How do we know that there’s not other organizations or GAOs or any of these other for-profit entities that also have prison beds?”
Lynch said the Department of Corrections has not demanded the contract.
“All of a sudden we’re going to let the Republicans shove this down Montana’s throat so we’re celebrating locking more people up and sending them out-of-state. I just want to make sure that everybody knows what we’re doing,” Lynch said.
The bill now moves back to the full Senate for consideration and the House must sign off on the Senate changes. The Legislature is at day 79 of a 90-day session.
Source: Independent Record
