By Bob Kalinowski
The Citizens’ Voice
NEWPORT TWP, Pa. — After weeks of uncertainty and worry, Newport Township Commissioner Paul Czapracki breathed a sigh of relief Thursday morning when word broke that State Correctional Institution at Retreat would remain open and its 400 jobs would be saved.
One of those jobs is his.
He works there in maintenance, so his concern has been twofold -- as a township leader and an employee.
“I’ve been sick to my stomach. You didn’t know what your future was,” Czapracki said. “It would be like starting over.”
But more worrisome, he said, was the economic fate of Newport Township. The township includes the Glen Lyon section, ranked last year as the most distressed part of the state.
State Sen. John Yudichak, who has deep roots in the township, and state Rep. Gerald Mullery, who lives there, broke the news Thursday morning after speaking to members of Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration. SCI-Retreat, the largest employer by far in Newport Township, was one of five state prisons being considered for closure. Since the closure plan was floated by the governor on Jan. 6, Yudichak and Mullery have strongly advocated to keep SCI-Retreat open and preserve the 400 jobs in Newport Township.
“We know most of these people. They are not just state workers. They are not faceless names,” Yudichak said. “Since Jan. 6, there hasn’t been a day that went by that we haven’t made the case for SCI-Retreat. Today we got a victory.”
Mullery estimated he personally knows 200 of the SCI-Retreat workers, many of whom also live and pay taxes in Newport Township. If those jobs were sent to other prisons in the state, it would have crippled the township, he said.
“The last thing we needed was another financial hit to our hometown,” Mullery said.
Newport Township Manager Peter Wanchisen said the township would have suffered an immediate loss of at least $100,000 in tax revenue per year. In the years to come, he said the community would have likely experienced an exodus of correctional officers who lived in the town, but had to move to take a job at another prison in the state. Additionally, the loss of the 1,100 inmates that are counted in the township’s population would reduce the municipality’s status to that of a second-class township, he said.
“We’re totally relieved,” Wanchisen said.
Yudichak noted the local delegation of lawmakers will be prepared to fight to save the prison from future cutbacks.
He noted the prison is increasingly becoming specialized to house mentally ill prisoners. If the “niche” continues to grow, it will be harder to close the prison in the future, he said.
The veteran lawmaker also noted that saving SCI-Retreat keeps alive the possibility of Luzerne County building a new prison nearby to share costs.
SCI-Retreat opened as a state prison in January 1988. The facility, which sits between the Susquehanna River and a mountainside, had been a state-run mental health hospital until 1981. One of the reasons it was slated for possible closure is that the prison is only accessible by crossing a bridge over the river from U.S. Route 11 in Hunlock Creek.
Yudichak credited SCI-Retreat workers, their families and concerned members of the community for saving the facility with their pleas to keep it open.
“I’ve never been more inspired,” Yudichak said. “The voices of Northeastern Pennsylvania were heard.”
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(c)2017 The Citizens’ Voice (Wilkes-Barre, Pa.)
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