Budget cuts could thwart prison work program

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - More than four years ago, Oregon voters approved a law requiring prison inmates to work a 40-hour week to help pay for their prison stay and make restitution to victims and communities.

To date, just under 60 percent of eligible inmates are fulfilling the voters' mandate, and corrections officials estimate it will take at least eight more years to employ all the state's eligible prisoners.

But even those projections will suffer a serious blow if Governor John Kitzhaber's budget proposal gains support. He proposes cutting the 1999-2001 inmate work program budget from $14.4 million to $9 million.

Kitzhaber said he is not trying to stall inmate work programs.

However, he added, "We need to ask ourselves, 'What is the price for full compliance, and are we willing to pay it?'"

Creating inmate work in Oregon so far has required a combination of generous general fund support - $34 million by the end of the budget biennium - and the aggressive pursuit of private partnerships and contracts.

State Rep. Kevin Mannix, R-Salem, who sponsored the measure in 1994, plans to seek even more financing.

"I've had to tell these idiots over and over again that the measure had to do with community benefit," said Mannix, who will play an influential role in the debate as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which handles prison issues. "If inmates help a community at a cost lower than outside workers could have provided it for, then taxpayers have come out ahead, even if the state has to underwrite some of the cost."

Legislators in both parties agree inmate work will become a center of debate in the session. But where that will lead is uncertain.

"This is not something I expect to break down party lines," said State Rep. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, who supports the idea of inmate work but worries about its cost. "I think everyone will look at the issue, listen and decide where we should go next. Where that is, I don't know."

Kitzhaber said figuring out how the program should be implemented is a monumental task.

"We've bumped into security risks, taken jobs away from law-abiding citizens and competed with the private sector," he said. "That's happening at the same time as we're paying millions to get the program up and running. I don't think voters intended these things to happen."

Corrections officials have faced serious challenges finding jobs for the 6,688 prisoners who are eligible. Prisons don't have enough space to employ more inmates on-site. Transporting them and monitoring them are costly. And Measure 17 mandates that inmate work go beyond busy work.

"You can't have inmates cleaning the same toilets three times because the constitution says the work has got to be 'meaningful,'" said Nancy DeSouza, spokeswoman for the Corrections Department's Inmate Work Programs.

"Most taxpayers didn't think about the cost to the state," DeSouza said. "They thought we would be able to immediately fire up all these businesses and sell products that wouldn't compete with business or hurt anybody."

A Eugene company that made furniture and tents for state parks cried foul when the contract went to prison workers. And a construction labor union objected when inmate work was used to help build the Umatilla prison.

Two dozen employees were laid off in October when Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene opted not to renew its contract with a local laundry and sent its linens to the Oregon State Penitentiary instead.

Ruth Lawshi of Creswell was among those laid off.

Hired by American Linen in June, it was the first time in years that Lawshi and her husband, Charles, 50, a disabled Vietnam veteran, had been able to get off food stamps.

"I'm not angry at the prison," said Lawshi, who still has not found full-time work and is back on welfare. "What upsets me is that prisoners don't have to worry about food, bills and clothing."

"As a taxpayer, I'm paying for their living situation, and then I lose my job to them," she said. "It hurts."

DeSouza said it was unfortunate that workers were laid off but corrections should not be criticized for doing what voters ordered it to do.

"Competition with the private sector is the reality of what we've been charged to do," DeSouza said.