By Julie Carr Smyth
Associated Press
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The status of the nation’s first privately-owned state prison has been argued before the Ohio Supreme Court in a lawsuit on behalf of union workers displaced by the sale.
Lawyers for the Ohio Civil Service Employees Association and the state went before justices Wednesday. The union, a group of individuals and the liberal policy group ProgressOhio sued after a budget signed by Gov. John Kasich allowed the state to sell Lake Erie Correctional Facility and to place a second state prison under private management.
Plaintiffs argue the privatization plan violated Ohio’s constitutional provision limiting the budget bill to a single subject. State attorneys say the plan raised money and cut costs, so fit the budget’s subject.
Corrections Corporation of America bought the prison in 2011 for nearly $73 million.