The Georgia Department of Corrections is proposing to cut more than 1,300 positions and realign its prisons in light of the statewide budget crunch, but Hays State Prison in Trion is slated to remain open.
Construction also is continuing on a 156-bed fast-track building on the grounds, and operating money is included in the budget for fiscal year 2010, which starts July 1, according to state Rep. Barbara Massey Reece, D-Menlo.
“I believe the warden is committed, and (DOC) Commissioner Brian Owens is committed, to ensuring there is adequate staff there,” she said.
Reece, a member of the House State Institutions and Property Committee, has been in especially close con-
tact with the DOC after an October escape at the Chattooga County facility. Two inmates climbed a dormitory roof and scaled two perimeter fences and eight strands of razor wire. Johnny Mack Brown was captured in Lavonia a month later, but Michael A. Tweedell remains at large.
Reece said the DOC budget plan calls for consolidating prison functions, such as setting up a single facility for mentally ill prisoners and further separating minimum- and maximum-security operations.
“We also have an aging prison population with health problems, and they’re thinking about a separate facility for that,” she said.
One cut-back proposal that could hurt Chattooga is the elimination of all fire stations at state prisons. The rural county depends mainly on volunteer firefighters.
“That little fire force at the prison is very important to us,” Reece said. “But I can understand them saying it’s not a core mission (of the DOC).”
State Sen. Preston Smith, R-Rome, said appropriations hearings this year are focused like a laser on the core missions of each agency. The casual sharing of resources — such as the use of prisoners to mow grass at other state facilities — is giving way to an interagency billing system.
“There’s a real competitiveness among the agencies for state dollars and they’re trying to balance their books on each other,” he said. “It’s a good way to account for the resources, but it has also added administrative costs to the ability to lend things back and forth.”
Smith chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee for Appropriations. He said salaries are set by state law for judges, district attorneys and other court officials, so there’s less flexibility in how to handle the belt-tightening.
“It’s a unique budget as far as trying to minimize the cuts we make to services and minimize the job losses,” he said.
On a positive note, he said, discussions between House and Senate budget writers have been much more collaborative. In previous years, negotiations between the two chambers haven’t started in earnest until after each body had passed its spending proposal.
“There’s more of a spirit of cooperation,” Smith said. “We’re meeting on the front end to try to work things out.”
Reece said she also noticed more camaraderie during the hearings last week.
“There’s no room to monkey around this time,” she said. “When you look at the possibility of school nurses being cut out, when the Georgia State Patrol is 400 positions short of what used to be considered full force, it’s a very serious thing and I think everybody realizes that.”
Click here to see the House Budget Web site.
