Posted on 01/22/2005 10:59:59 AM PST by John Jorsett
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration has quietly taken steps to reopen two privately run prisons in Kern County -- with no-bid contracts -- that were shut down as a cost-saving move barely a year ago.
The Department of Corrections said they were needed because of an unexpected increase in inmates.
But the move sparked angry outbursts from critics who questioned the prison population figures and said lobbying by former administration insiders persuaded the governor to reopen at least one of the facilities.
A Bakersfield man who ran one of the closed prisons sharply criticized the department for taking the facility away from his firm, which had an exemplary record, and giving it to a competitor without taking bids.
"That's why I suspect there was some kind of deal somewhere," said Gary White, vice president of the firm that formerly operated the low-security Mesa Verde community correctional facility on Golden State Avenue. "I don't know if it was part of a deal or what. We're trying to find out now."
Within days, The Department of Corrections expects to sign a contract that will pay $5.7 million to a Massachusetts-based company, Civigenics, to run the 350-bed Mesa Verde for a year.
Civigenics operates prisons in other states and runs inmate treatment programs for drug abuse and other problems at four California prisons, including the one in Tehachapi.
Civigenics president and CEO Roy Ross said the company has frequent contact with California prison officials and offered its services when it heard they wanted to reopen Mesa Verde.
The other facility being reopened is a similar low-security community correctional facility in McFarland.
The department earlier this month signed a $3.5 million no-bid contract with GEO Group Inc. to reopen the facility and run it for one year. The firm, a successor to Wackenhut Corrections Corp., operated that facility until it was closed in 2003. It also operates two other nearby facilities in McFarland that were not closed.
The decision raised eyebrows Friday after it was learned that Donna Arduin, who resigned late last year as Schwarzenegger's finance director, has since joined the board of a GEO spinoff firm that actually owns the McFarland facilities, Correctional Properties Trust.
GEO, based in Boca Raton, Fla., operates prisons across the country and makes lease payments to its spinoff, Correctional Properties Trust, according to the Los Angeles Times.
GEO announced that Arduin joined the Correctional Properties board in October, 10 days after she left her job as Schwarzenegger's budget chief to return to Florida and open an economic consulting firm.
GEO also donated $53,000 to Schwarzenegger's campaign fund in November 2003. That was shortly after he took office, but just at the time the Department of Corrections was closing the McFarland facility under orders from the administration of former Gov. Gray Davis.
The governor's office did not respond to a request for comment, but a prison system spokesman said Arduin played no role in the decision to reopen the McFarland facility.
"She had nothing to do with it," said J.P. Tremblay, spokesman for the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency.
Officials said the move to reopen both facilities was driven by a soaring population of minimum security inmates.
In addition to those facilities, he said the state has had to convert two California Youth Authority camps into adult facilities.
They said the no-bid contracts enable them to get the facilities open quickly, but they will consider calling for bids on longer-term contracts if the overcrowding persists.
Neither Arduin nor officials of GEO Group could be reached for comment Friday. But others voiced deep skepticism about the move.
"This is something that I believe truly crosses the line of integrity and ethics," said state Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, who heads legislative committees that oversee the prison system.
"Donna Arduin was the finance director," Romero said. "To have her, 10 days after she leaves office, go on this board, which it's later revealed has state money directed their way, is very troubling."
Romero also scoffed at administration officials' statements that the facilities are needed because of rising inmate numbers.
"I believe they are manufacturing the crisis," she said. "We got a briefing on the details of the (proposed new prison system) budget and it was just a few days ago. There was not one word mentioned about the contract that had already been signed to reopen one of those facilities."
Officials of the prison guards' union were equally outraged.
Lance Corcoran, executive vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Association, said the department could open a closed women's facility in Northern California if it wanted to.
"We don't have a crisis," Corcoran said. Others said the union bears a large share of the blame for the volatile fate of the private prisons.
Critics of the union said Davis decided to close the facilities because of pressure from the union. The CCPOA was one of Davis' biggest campaign contributors, and it makes no secret of its opposition to non-union private prisons.
One of the union's sharpest critics is White, vice president of the former Alternative Programs Inc., which operated Mesa Verde for 14 years until it was closed at the end of 2003.
He blames the union entirely for the closure of the facility.
"Why would the state do that?" he said. "The only answer I could come up with is that the union didn't want the competition."
Uh huh. It was a pure coincidence that Gray Davis simultaneously got big donations from the prison guard's union in an attempt to save his keister during the recall. PURE coincidence I tells ya.
Cal. and other states have to have more room for all the illegals who commit crimes that Americans will not commit.
The real corruption was when Davis got a huuuuge check from the prison union, and within a week ordered that ALL privately run prisons be shut down. I see this act by arnold as reversing that.
LOL. My system goes into complete shutdown when a DemoCRAP starts preaching about "integrity and ethics." And an LA DemoCRAP at that . . . a double-whammy of gullibility required to believe anything such a person might say.
Is something fishy going on? Maybe . . . but they'll have to get better character witnesses for me to buy into it.
You're not supposed to remember that! :)
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