Thousands will be laid off and several prisons will have to close, one director says.
By Laura A. Bischoff
Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS — If the state Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections has to chop 10 percent from its budget, the prison system would cut 2,749 employees, close multiple prisons and get rid of so many programs that Ohio would run a “lock and feed” operation, according to Director Terry Collins.
In a letter to state Budget Director Pari Sabety, Collins outlined dire consequences if the prison system is forced to make budget cuts, including inmate health care falling below legally mandated levels, resulting in “costly litigation,” and supervision of sex offenders in the community would be reduced to tracking only.
Collins isn’t the only one sounding the alarm.
Ohio Public Defender Tim Young warned that his office “and indigent defense throughout Ohio will be unable to maintain constitutionally mandated services if these budget cuts are made.”
The Ohio Department of Agriculture Director Robert Boggs said without an increase in funding, “the department will not be able to assure Ohioans that it can guarantee the safety of our food, nor the well being of our plant and animal health.”
Boggs, Collins and Young wrote the letters in September before the budget forecasts took a drastic turn for the worse.
Now those state agencies and others may be asked to sustain as much as a 25 percent cut to their general revenue funds to help chop $7.3 billion from the state’s twoyear operating budget in fiscal years 2010 and 2011. Details of what a 25 percent budget cut might look like are not yet available.
“It’s important to keep in mind that those plans are just that: plans. No decisions have been made and no decisions can be made until we know with certainty what action the federal government may take in early 2009,” said Strickland spokesman Keith Dailey.
Gov. Ted Strickland has asked federal authorities for $5 billion to help bail Ohio out of the budget crisis.
Copyright 2008 Dayton Newspapers, Inc.