|
CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE PRESS ROOM | |
| http://www.cjcj.org/index.php |
| Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, 1622 Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA 94103 | Tel: (415) 621-5661 | Fax: (415) 621-5466 |
SACRAMENTO - The projected five-year cost of California's prison guard contract has soared from $521 million when it was ratified two years ago to as much as $2 billion, state officials disclosed Thursday. State senators conducting a series of oversight hearings called it the latest indication of chronic mismanagement of the nation's largest prison system.
The Senate is set to consider next week a supplemental spending bill to cover guards' salary increases at a time when legislators are considering cuts to other state programs because of the state's massive budget deficit.
Sen. Gloria Romero, D-Los Angeles, the oversight committee chairwoman, said she will vote against the spending bill as lawmakers struggle to find ways to renegotiate the contract. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also is pressing to reopen the contract negotiated by his predecessor. The 30,000-member California Correctional Peace Officers Association has declined, calling instead for more cost efficiencies within the Department of Corrections.
Gov. Gray Davis, who was recalled by voters in October, was sharply criticized for negotiating the contract with a union that gave him more than $2 million in 1998 and another $1 million during his 2002 re-election campaign, including $251,000 two months after he signed the contract legislation.
Davis' administration put the contract cost at $521 million as it was presented to lawmakers for their approval in January 2002; Schwarzenegger's administration put the cost Thursday as high as $2 billion, largely because it is indirectly tied to pay increases for local police agencies that have exceeded projections. The increases could now exceed the previously projected 37 percent over five years.
Negotiators said they met Davis' goal of avoiding any pay raises in the contract's first two years, as he struggled to deal with a burgeoning budget crisis. But that has pushed raises into the final three years, as the state continues to struggle.
"We went two years without a pay raise, and we did that in good faith," said Union President Mike Jimenez.
Senators complained the contract has let overtime and sick time payments spiral out of control. An Associated Press analysis in January found the department overspent by nearly $1.6 billion since 1999, with much of it going for overtime and sick leave.
Overtime can be so lucrative that there's a disincentive to accept promotion to salaried administrative posts, senators complained.
But less than 2 percent of guards take home more than $100,00 a year, said union Vice President Lance Corcoran, and many of them work long involuntary overtime transporting inmates or fighting wildfires.
Romero noted state auditors blamed much of the excessive overtime on short-staffing that forces available guards to work extra shifts.
Jimenez said California's staffing ratio is currently 47th worst in the nation and will only deteriorate because no guards are being added as the system loses about a thousand guards each year to attrition. No new guards are being trained because changes in the state's parole system are expected to mean 15,000 fewer inmates, said department spokeswoman Margot Bach.
Aside from encouraging overspending, the contract includes protections for employees accused of wrongdoing that the state attorney general says are illegal and internal affairs investigators say impede their probes.
"We could not have created a more ripe environment to cultivate a 'code of silence' if we had tried," said Romero, referring to a January finding by a federal court-appointed investigator. As a result, "the credibility of the department is in the gutter."
Jimenez and Corcoran, however, said the rules merely protect employees' due process rights.
Hearing co-chair Sen. Jackie Speier, D-Daly City, said the state's contract negotiators were "outgunned, outstaffed and outfoxed" by the union's experienced tag-team.
Both co-chairs called for more legislative oversight of contract negotiations and extensive review before contracts are ratified. The guards' contract, like most, was "rubber stamped" with just one dissenting vote by legislators who had little knowledge or understanding of the consequences, they said. ---
| This site and its contents © 2002 Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice |