Frustrated Colorado lawmakers gave a “huge slap on the wrist” to the state’s correctional system and its leaders Wednesday, rejecting more than $20 million in funding requests.
They also vented their anger that senior officials hadn’t better planned to address prison overcrowding that’s coming to a head.
“I want to know what it is (Gov. Jared Polis’) administration is going to do and going to support, beyond just continued requests for more beds, building more prisons and spending more money in that respect,” Rep. Emily Sirota, a Denver Democrat who chairs the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, told colleagues during a meeting Wednesday afternoon.
The rejections, including a refusal to pay for hundreds more prison beds, came a month after a legislative analyst warned that the state’s prisons were going to exceed their capacity in the coming fiscal year, primarily because the number of inmates released on discretionary parole has declined.
The four Democratic members of the JBC, which controls the state budget, asked with growing consternation why the Department of Corrections hadn’t brought them a plan to address overcrowding, to step up releases of old and infirm inmates, or to improve its own shortcomings. Those include challenges like high vacancies among sex offender treatment staff, a problem that’s kept scores of inmates in prison past their parole dates, as The Denver Post recently reported.
The goal of Wednesday’s votes, lawmakers said, was to spur Polis and prison officials to either support legislation intended to address prison overcrowding or to come up with their own plan to solve the problem, without simply increasing the number or size of state prisons. Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat on the committee, said bills she’s previously considered running were shelved because she was told “they wouldn’t see the light of day.”
“It all falls on deaf ears unless we push back,” she said.
A spokesperson for the Corrections Department did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
In a statement, Polis spokeswoman Shelby Wieman said the governor wanted to cover medical costs, address a jail backlog — in which local facilities are housing some state prisoners — and increase prison capacity.
“We are eager to explore any solutions that ensure we are protecting public safety, supporting and protecting the safety of DOC staff, provide safe living conditions for offenders, and better prepare offenders to go back into communities and not recommit a crime,” she wrote. “The Governor’s Office will be in front of the Joint Budget Committee on Monday and will consider what portions of the DOC request to potentially bring back for consideration.”
$2.4 million request for more beds
In a Jan. 9 letter to the committee, state budget director Mark Ferrandino wrote that Polis’ office and prison officials “are working diligently to identify options to address the additional demands for capacity.”
But his letter went on to describe only plans to increase prison capacity, including through purchasing or leasing new or dormant facilities.
“However, we remain committed to working with the Legislature and its staff to identify the best path forward for the State of Colorado,” Ferrandino wrote.
Among the funding requests rejected Wednesday: a $2.4 million ask for 788 more prison beds. Kyle Giddings, of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, said it was the first time in his organization’s 25-year history that its leaders remembered the budget committee denying a request to add more prison beds.
Giddings’ group and Colorado WINS, the union that represents prison workers, had urged the committee in a statement Tuesday to reject the funding requests.
“Colorado WINS has never opposed a DOC request for additional prison beds,” Hilary Glasgow, the executive director of the union, said in a statement. “Limited prison capacity is of course a challenge for staff, but we are in the midst of a staffing crisis that’s compromising safety for our members, the incarcerated population, and the public, and adding more beds is only going to make things much worse.”Lawmakers’ frustration with the state prison system has been building.
Sirota and Amabile described posing repeated — and unanswered — questions about prison planning and management. The Corrections Department’s annual budget recently surpassed $1 billion in a legislature that is often short on cash. The agency is seeking an additional funding boost this year, even as lawmakers grapple with a roughly $750 million budget shortfall that will likely require cuts to core services like Medicaid.
“As a person who’s focused his career on health care predominantly, it pains me to fund prisons,” said Rep. Kyle Brown, a Louisville Democrat on the budget committee. “We have to, it’s a necessary part of our state. But every dollar we have to spend on a new bed in a department that receives … no federal funding, is at least $2, maybe $10, that we could be spending on Medicaid to get people health care.”
Jail payments, medical expenses
In addition to rejecting the bed request, the budget committee also agreed only to sign off on 50% of the requested money for jail payments, medical expenses and contract services for health providers. It delayed a $3.9 million payment for unfunded liability for the Colorado Public Employees’ Retirement Association, the state’s public pension plan.
Sirota and Amabile argued that they could pay for the rest of the jail and medical requests later in the spring.
The committee’s two Republicans — Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart — expressed some sympathy and similar frustrations.
But they worried about the strain placed on local jails, which have housed some prison inmates to ease overcrowding. Plus, the Republicans said, the legislature will face the need to pay those bills in the near future anyway.
Kirkmeyer, of Brighton, said delaying full payment for jails could increase the risks for the people in the jails and the staff members overseeing them.
“I mean, I guess it’s a big, huge slap on the wrist — tell (Polis’ office and prison officials) to get in here and that you want to see the planning,” she told her Democratic colleagues. “But I don’t know why you haven’t been pressuring them in the last couple of years.”
Though Giddings’ group had urged lawmakers to reject the department’s requests, he said he was still surprised the committee followed through.
“The JBC just finally looked at everything that was happening and just heard what we’ve been saying for a long time,” he said. “The Department of Corrections isn’t underfunded; it’s underperforming. It’s time to fix what’s going on and stop holding up a broken bureaucracy.”
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