By Tim Lockette
The Anniston Star
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Gov. Robert Bentley’s $800 million plan to build four new prisons took one step forward and one step back in the Alabama House of Representatives on Thursday.
After more than seven hours of debate, House members voted 52-33 to approve a plan to take out a bond issue to build three 4,000-bed men’s prisons and one smaller women’s prison to replace Tutwiler Prison for women.
But in a 49-35 vote, House members added an amendment that would require prison officials to produce more details on the prison plan and come back for another vote next year.
“It’s saying to the people of Alabama that we are serious about taking care of their money,” said Rep. A.J. McCampbell, D-Demopolis, who brought the amendment.
The governor in February announced a plan to close Tutwiler and more than a dozen men’s prisons, replacing them with new buildings. The state’s prisons, most of them decades old, are packed to roughly 180 percent of their built capacity. The new prisons, once built, would reduce that number to around 125 percent.
“This is not a recent issue,” said Rep. Mike Jones, R-Andalusia, sponsor of the prison-building bill. “The conditions are poor, they’ve been poor for a long time. We simply do not spend the money we need to maintain the facilities and we’re paying the price for it.”
Prison officials have blamed overcrowding for recent riots and stabbings at the state’s men’s prisons. Reports of sexual abuse of inmates at Tutwiler have already led to limited federal intervention at the prison, and lawmakers say they expect an eventual federal court order to settle Alabama’s prison problem if the state doesn’t address overcrowding on its own.
“Frankly we’re in a difficult position, because how do you defend what’s obvious?” Jones said. “We have to do something about this problem.”
Paying back the bond issue would cost $50 million per year, but prison officials claim they’d be able to pay off the entire bill with savings from the closure of the older prisons.
House members were skeptical of that savings estimate, and of Bentley’s plan to use design/build — a foreshortened approach to the state’s typical bidding process — to select a contractor to build the prisons.
“I have a lot of concerns about this as a fiscal conservative,” said Rep. Patricia Todd, D-Birmingham. Todd claimed the Department of Corrections was already meeting with contractors to discuss the project.
Prisons spokesman Bob Horton said the DOC had met with corrections industry experts, but none who would bid on construction.
“ADOC does not intend to meet with prison construction companies that could potentially bid on the project,” Horton wrote in an email.
McCampbell’s amendment would require the Joint Legislative Prison Committee to produce a report on the prison construction plan by the 25th day of the 2017 legislative session. If the Legislature rejects that plan in 2017, the project won’t be built and no bonds will be issued.
It’s unclear how that would affect Bentley’s plan, which originally had the state building all the prisons over the span of a few years in order to close old prisons and realize savings. Bentley has said the plan has to run on schedule to work properly.
Democrats largely opposed the bill, arguing that new prisons could quickly fill up with inmates if the state decides to pass new criminal laws. Some urged the House to wait and see if recently passed prison reforms, which reduced sentences for some property and drug crimes, could reduce the prison population.
Jones said that while prison construction will help with overcrowding, the physical state of the prisons was also an issue.
“That was about who goes in and out,” Jones said of the 2015 prison reform bill. “This is about the condition of facilities. It’s not the same issue.”
Rep. Barbara Boyd, D-Anniston, a longtime critic of conditions at Tutwiler, urged lawmakers to trust that problems with the prison bill could be worked out in future sessions.
“I don’t want to prolong the time, but I do want to say there’s a dire need for prisons, and for women’s prisons in particular,” Boyd said.
The bill has already passed the Senate, but various amendments mean the bill will have to go back to the Senate for another vote.
There are two days left in the legislative session.
Copyright 2016 The Anniston Star