LANSING -- The Mound Road prison in
Detroit will close, about 2,000 prison
employees face layoffs and tens of
thousands more state employees will get
four unpaid days off in 2012, under
budget-balancing plans announced
Wednesday by the administration of Gov.
Rick Snyder.
The prison closing, furloughs and a
handful of other measures are aimed at
saving state taxpayers about $145
million in the 2011-12 state fiscal
year, which begins Saturday. They were
announced after talks with state
employee unions failed to produce
contract concessions to close the gap.
Among the most controversial moves --
and the one most likely to lead to major
state employee layoffs -- is a plan to
turn over all prison health care and
prison mental health services to a
private contractor.
Union representatives and Democrats
in the Legislature denounced the moves
as counterproductive and wrongheaded,
predicting the savings won't
materialize. Closing the Mound prison is
a betrayal of assurances the governor
made earlier to keep it open, they also
said. Prison officials said Wednesday
that the prison is expensive to run and
unneeded as prisoner populations
decline.
"This is not what we wanted," budget
spokesman Kurt Weiss said, "but we
couldn't get an agreement to cut costs.
... We didn't have an alternative."
Sides clash over prison cuts aimed
at saving $50M
LANSING -- Up to 2,000 state prison
employees could lose their jobs during
the next 12 months as a Detroit prison
is shuttered and the entire prison
health care system is turned over to a
private contractor, moves aimed at
saving about $50 million next year and
more in years to come.
The directives were announced
Wednesday by Department of Corrections
Director Daniel Heyns, who said they are
"good management decisions" that were
needed to deal with a declining prison
population and make health care delivery
to inmates more efficient.
But the prison policies -- which
touched off a firestorm of criticism,
especially from defenders of the Mound
Correctional Facility -- also are part
of a budget-balancing plan unveiled by
the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder
late Wednesday after talks broke down to
win $145 million in concessions from
state employee unions for the 2011-12
fiscal year, which begins Saturday.
Heyns said the Mound Road prison is
the most expensive-to-operate prison of
its kind in the Michigan system. He said
many of the 300 employees there would be
eligible for transfer to another job
within the department.
Heyns also said he thought it likely
that many of the about 1,700 corrections
employees who provide health care and
mental health care services to
prisoners, including those at a prison
for mentally ill inmates in Whitmore
Lake, would be hired by the private
company or companies that take over
those services.
"It's ironic that we're closing a
prison" and so many people are unhappy,
Heyns said. "It seems like it should be
a cause for celebration" that fewer
prison beds are needed.
Lawmakers and union leaders said the
closure of Mound, slated for around Jan.
15, is "obscenely stupid" and reneged on
a commitment made by Snyder and
legislative leaders only a few months
ago.
The prison was targeted for closure
in state budget talks earlier this year,
but it was left untouched in the final
draft adopted in May.
Mel Grieshaber, head of Michigan
Corrections Organization representing
prison security staff, disputed the
claim that Mound is more expensive to
operate and predicted savings from the
closure and privatization of health care
services will be illusory.
Grieshaber said contracting prison
services, especially those related to
custody and prisoner management, is an
immoral abdication of public
responsibility.
"We don't believe in any of that.
Prisons shouldn't be run by private
companies," he said.
But administration officials said an
analysis of the prison health care
operations showed that a private
contractor could provide adequate
services and save taxpayers $30 million
in 2012, about 10% of the department's
health care tab for the year. Department
officials will seek a request for
proposals from potential contractors
soon, but no timetable for
implementation has been set, spokesman
Russ Marlan said.
Meanwhile, other state employees were
notified by the administration Wednesday
of a series of austerity measures that
will affect them, as well.
Among them are plans to seek more
contributions from employees to defined
benefit pension plans and retiree health
care costs, additional concessions from
prison employees, and four furlough days
for 37,000 unionized state employees.
(Nonunion employees will not be
furloughed because they did not get
contractual pay raises in 2010-11.)
State employees, especially in the
prison system, were on edge Wednesday.
Adam Douglas, 38, of Eastpointe is a
supervisor at the Macomb Correctional
Facility but had worked as a
correctional officer at Mound for nearly
15 years before moving in August.
Although he's high on the seniority
list, he's worried that the closure
could affect his schedule and his hours.
"And a couple hundred people I work
with could actually end up unemployed,
and I worry about them," he said.
"They're talking about 2,000 people
getting laid off, and when they start
throwing around those types of numbers,
it makes people very, very nervous."
He's also concerned about the impact
the loss of all those people working in
the city will have on Detroit's coffers
when the city loses income taxes from
those state employees.
"That's just a lot of money being
removed from the city," Douglas said.
"To take any jobs out of metro Detroit
just adds to the economic depression of
the area."
