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Century Correctional Institution Safe; Compromise Will Prevent Prison Closures

Senate Ways and Means Chairman JD Alexander and Senate President Jeff Atwater have agreed to a compromise that will prevent the closing of prisons that had been floated earlier, and put $20 million into the Department of Corrections budget to avoid any job cuts.

The department would also retain discretion on how to fill a new private prison in Santa Rosa County under the agreement between Senate leaders and critics of the earlier plan, said a spokeswoman for Senate Democrats. Alexander, R-Lake Wales, had promoted an earlier plan to fill the newly built private prison in the Panhandle that would have meant job losses at other DOC facilities, stirring up opposition from lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, in areas with lots of prison jobs.

Alexander’s plan would have including closing two state-run prisons and laying off 639 prison guards. He also would have privatized a now-unidentified 1,350-bed prison. The prisons that would be closed, and the 1,350-bed prison to be privatized were not been named. Century Correctional Institution fits that profile, with a maximum capacity of 1,345 prisoners, according to the Florida Department of Corrections. Century CI was over capacity with 1,435 inmates as of January 31. Century is not the only prison facility in the state with an approximate capacity of 1,350.

The compromise pleased some law enforcement officials, but left some Democrats and the state’s largest labor union uneasy as the Florida Senate took up its budget Wednesday.

“We have a lot of concerns,” said Florida AFL-CIO President Mike Williams. “If this leads toward continued privatizations, I can’t stand up and support (it).”

Williams said that he was “really uncomfortable” with the entire plan to open the Blackwater River Correctional Institution, not just the compromise reached Wednesday by Democrats. He also lamented not having an opportunity for a “meaningful review” of the legislation.

Opponents have said the plan to privatize more than 5,000 prison beds could result in more than 1,000 correctional officer layoffs. But Sen. Democratic Leader Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee, said that the compromise with Alexander was the best Democrats could to with the proposal, which emerged late in the budget process in the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

“It has not been an easy situation, but right now, we have what I think is a great compromise,” Lawson said during a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting Wednesday morning. “What I’ve hammered out here is the best way for us to go into conference. We do not need to go into conference closing the facility. We do not need to go into conference having lost 1,900 jobs.”

Just as quickly, however, Lawson acknowledged that the deal was a temporary fix that would not completely eliminate privatization at state prisons.

“Right now members I certainly hope that you all will support these amendments because it…saves a lot of jobs,” he said. “Now in terms of how do you move forward in the future, we really don’t know.”

But Lawson said Wednesday’s vote on the compromise would not be the end of the conversation and pledged to make sure labor unions had “a seat at the table” as the Senate and House conference on differing budgets.

The compromise was good enough for Florida Police Benevolent Association Vice President Jim Baiardi, who agreed with Lawson that the deal was better than nothing.

“It’s not the best solution out there, but I did what I had to do, I saved my people’s jobs,” Baiardi said. “It’s not the best outcome that we like at this time, but we’re moving ahead.”

Baiardi still chastised lawmakers for even considering the prison cuts, saying “we think it’s very unfair that when these cuts came down, it went on the backs of the state correction officers.”

“It’s wrong. We’ve got a tough job out there,” he said. “Often we consider ourselves the unsung heroes of law enforcement. I don’t think we deserve every session to come up here and be treated like this for the job we do.”

Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, joined Williams in questioning the compromise, however, taking issue with what the Senate would have to not fund in order to save the prison jobs.

On the floor Wednesday, Republicans questioned the compromise too. Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, criticized both the initial plan and the deal, saying the issue wasn’t vetted by committees. Dockery, a candidate for governor, also criticized spending money to get Blackwater open.

“In this amendment, we’re coming up with nearly $23 million out of the existing budget to open a new facility,” she said. “My number one concern is this didn’t go through committees to vet a policy decision of this magnitude, but number two is what effect is this going to have on the existing facilities and the employees of those facilities. By opening this new facility, it’s not in the same geographic region as the existing facilities, so people are going to lose their jobs.”

Sen. Victor Crist, R-Tampa, who chairs the Senate’s Criminal and Civil Justice Appropriations, said that any job eliminations would take place over time, noting that about 300 of the Department of Corrections’ 30,000 employees retire or leave their positions each year.

“The way that this is set up is we will be able to transfer employees to other facilities, absorb them through the attrition process,” he said.

The architect of the original plan to close the existing prisons, Alexander, acknowledged that even with the compromise with Democrats, the deal would still increase the number of private prison beds in the state.

“That decision was made a couple years ago when we commissioned this prison to be built,” he said. “We spent $113 million or so of taxpayer dollars to put this prison there, we’ve done contracts with the provider, it was guided in an open bidding process.

“I don’t particularly care about private vs public,” Alexander said. “What I care about are the costs.”

Lawson’s amendment containing the prison was approved on a voice vote, and the budget was later unanimously approved.

Keith Lang, News Service Florida, contributed to this report.