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POLS UPDATE: Joint Budget Committee leadership slams Senate Republicans on this issue in a letter today:
This letter responds to a letter dated July 19, 2013, from the Senate Republican Caucus addressed to you. In that letter, the senators indicate concerns regarding the Colorado salary survey, specifically that it “has not been conducted according to best practices, or according to statutory requirements for determination and comparisons of total compensation.” As evidence, they cite the salaries of private corrections employees as compared to public corrections employees, and indicate a belief that the Department does not use private prisons as data points when conducting salary surveys…
Public safety is a core mission of state government. Prisons perform a complex and vital function and must have competent, professional and committed staff to operate safely and well. A “race to the bottom” on corrections employee salaries would certainly diminish the safety of our prisons, increase recidivism, and potentially put workers and Coloradans at risk. We are troubled by the discrepancy between salaries at state run and private facilities that the Senate Republicans helpfully point to, as well as the significant differences in staffing levels between the two types of institutions. We think that reflects a problem in the private, for profit prison industry.
We are interested in ensuring that the private prisons corporations with which the state contracts are meeting the same stated goal we have set for the state’s personnel system of providing total compensation that ensures the “recruitment, motivation and retention of a qualified and competent workforce.”
—–
Imagine your day as a correctional officer. You get up, put on your uniform and protective gear, and go to work in a stressful,tense environment. Your clients are incarcerated people, some of whom will be verbally abusive, many of whom are despairing, potentially violent, or dangerous. Your job is to protect the inmates from each other, help them to rehabilitate themselves, and to keep the public safe from your clients. Sound challenging? How about a 33% pay cut to sweeten the deal?
On Friday, July 19, 2013, fifteen Republican senators wrote a letter to Director of Personnel Kathy Nesbitt, proposing to change the method which determines correctional personnel salaries in Colorado.The Senators opined that the existing salary survey was flawed, because it didn’t compare public correctional officer salaries to those of workers in private for-profit prisons. If Nesbitt adopts the recommendations of the senators, it could result in a 33% pay cut for state employee prison personnel, an average pay cut of $17,000 per employee per year.
In Colorado, most of the 4000 correctional officers are unionized, on the union pay scale, and working in publicly funded prison facilities. 16% of correctional officers are working in privately owned for-profit facilities, and most of these are paid 33% less than their public-sector counterparts.
Why are these 15 senators suddenly targeting the wallets of Colorado prison guards?
Although the senators stated goal in seeking to change the salary study parameters is to avoid a “continuing detrimental effect on the state budget”, by targeting “The Department of Corrections, as the department with the most personnel in the state and most representative of the average state employee”, this claim does not stand up to investigation. Instead, the letter from the Republican Senators appears to be a pushback against a recent legislative victory by the Colorado WINS union.
Senate Bill 210, signed into law on May 24, 2013, and sponsored by Senator Angela Giron and Rep. Crisanta Duran, facilitated overtime pay for officers working double shifts, and otherwise improved inconsistent or unfair correctional officer pay and working conditions. This was a much-needed reform. The same bill repurposed Fort Lyons as a rehabilitation center for homeless veterans. Passage of SB210 is rightfully seen as a victory for the Colorado WINS union, and a legislative win for Giron and Duran.
Private prisons in Colorado are standing empty, or are partially filled. Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) , is Colorado’s largest private prison company. However, CCA only has a 23% “market share” of Colorado inmates, and only 16% of prison staff work in private prisons. Incarceration in Colorado is down by a third, over the last decade, according to Imse, who credits new sentencing structures and prison policies, which allow time off for good behavior. Less incarceration for marijuana offenses may also be a factor, since the passage of amendment 64.
This is not a friendly environment for expanding CCA's for-profit prison system in Colorado. There is simply not a need for private prison beds. Currently, CCA operates five facilities in Colorado, including facilities for juveniles and immigrants. Their continuing maintenance is seen as a support for jobs in struggling Colorado towns, where often the prison is a major employer. CCA, although limited in scope in Colorado, is extremely profitable nationwide; The company had almost 3 billion in assets at the end of the third quarter of 2013.
Therefore, since there is no need for expansion of private prisons in Colorado, and in fact some public and private prisons may be closed or repurposed, how is CCA to maintain its profitability in our state? Obviously, by cutting wages and expenses of operation. Hence, the suggested pay cut of the unionized prison staff, by the fourteen Republican Senators.
What would the Senators get out of this? Although they say that this would save the state money, in fact it will not; If 3500 prison staff people each lose $17,000 a year, Colorado's economy would take a $60 million hit. Although CCA profits would improve, the welfare of Coloradans as a whole would decline, along with, probably, conditions and safety within Colorado prisons. The WINS letter responding to the Senators reminds them of a riot at Crowley CF, in which the low-paid private staff walked out, leaving the public workers to deal with the problem.
So if the proposed salary decrease won't save the state budget, nor improve conditions in Colorado prisons, why are the Senators recommending it? In my opinion, intensive lobbying by CCA and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is the motive behind the Senator's proposal. CCA and ALEC are both extremely conservative organizations. They share a goal of expanding the for-profit prison system, and ALEC, additionally, has a goal of weakening public sector unions. Both goals are achieved by the Senator's proposal.
CCA is a corporation; ALEC works with state legislatures all over the United States to further a conservative social agenda. ALEC creates “sample” bills which are then adapted for use in different states. Approximately 80% of CCA political contributions go to Republican and conservative legislators; 20% go to Democratic and liberal legislators. According to Colorado Common Cause's report, "Prisons and Profits: Political Expenditures of the Private Prison Industry", within Colorado, CCA has given over $200,000 to lobby for legislation to expand private prisons and weaken employee unions.
The money trail is exceedingly clear.** Special recipients of CCA largess and ALEC direction are legislators Jerou, Lambert, Baumgardner, and Brophy. Every other legislator signing the letter requesting the prison staff salary decrease has either been working with ALEC lobbyists, or has received funds from CCA-funded PACS, or both.
Three of the signatories for the Nesbitt letter are ALEC members. (this link opens the "Prisons and Profits" pdf report. All of the signing senators have received contributions from conservative and republican PACS funded by CCA.
The Senators attacking the paychecks of prison guards and staff are, themselves, being paid off by campaign funding from conservative political PACS, in order to weaken public employee unions, and to expand private for-profit prisons., which are ALEC and CCA priorites .
The GOP senators are presenting this as a cost cutting measure, but it will not cut costs. There is a reason one wants well-paid, dedicated professionals to be in charge of inmates in our crowded, problematic prison system.
Taking $17,000 from the salaries of those 4000 prison guards will harm the guards and their families. It will harm Colorado’s economy. It will degrade the safety and efficiency of Colorado prisons. It will not make the public safer. It will put money into the campaign coffers of those fifteen senators, but that is hardly a public good.
Let’s keep our prisons under the care of unionized professionals.
** I'm not going to copy all of the details here, but I have used the TRACER program on the Secretary of State site to look up the committees and PACS listed in the Prisons and Profits publication, then searched for that committee, then looked for that PAC's contributions to individual legislators.) Common Cause has also detailed much of its findings on contributions in that publication.
*Corrections: My first draft of this post said that only fourteen senators signed the letter to Director Nesbitt; Fifteen, including Senator Grantham, signed the letter.
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Think about this. Kevin Grantham represents Canon City. Greg Brophy represents Sterling.
These fucking morons are calling for some of the best jobs in their districts to get a 1/3 pay cut.
Where oh where is the outrage?
Apparently, the Joint Budget Committee thinks it's pretty lame, too. http://bit.ly/15K1lfF
great diary, mama!
Thanks, Gray. Looks as though the Post picked it up:
http://t.co/EZNhQIYuBi
And I think Jeffco has the right idea – people that live in these districts need to contact the senators who want to cut wages in their district. What happened to "Jobs jobs jobs!," anyway?
Kent Lambert, for example, who is full of outrage about the Joint Budget Committee pushback, and still wants to promote the salary cut, has several correctional facilities in his Colorado Springs District 9.
Mama, this is a great post on a subject dear to my heart. Passionately written, well researched and copiously referenced. Thanks for your effort.
I echo your comments, GL. Mama, I'm really enjoying the newest member of the club. During my 2010 state senate campaign I spoke a lot about the prison conundrum we have in my world of eastern Colorado. I'll focus this response on Kit Carson County: the single largest taxpayer and employer in the county is the CCA prison. Prior to 2010 there was a lot of pressure on then-Gov. Ritter to keep their prison open. Keep in mind, we already had a new state prison that was empty and we had falling incarcertation rates. The choice was to consider shutting down one of the rural CCA sites [Burlington] and move the prisoners to the state prison. The decision was made to leave the private facility in Burlington full. A testament to the lobbying power of CCA under the Golden Dome.
It's hard to miss all of the irony with this culture of dependency we've created in these rural communities. The bulk of them who would like to secede. At it's core, the private prison industry has become a significant transfer of wealth from the states taxpayers to their rural communities. Ditto for the wind farms that fill the coffers of Weld, Logan, Kit Carson, Lincoln, Prowers and Baca Counties: it's the evil, front-range liberals who belong to the Xcel Energy system that indirectly fund these counties. Yet, the fairy tale world of Dumphuckistan lives on.
As for Brophy's position on this issue – it will be completely missed or dismissed by the vast majority of Senate District. He'd rather gin up a new grievance against the left than an accomplishment for the right. This is a man who shoots his inferior watermelons with high-powered assault rifles after a night of drinking with his gun buddies. There isn't much space that divides his mentality on that issue with his silence on the 109,000 kids who live in childhood poverty in his senate district.
This is the same man who spends an inordinate amount of time yacking about the size of sodas, Michael Bloomberg, and at the time, railing on Bill Ritter about the 'soda tax'. All the while being a part of a federal farm subsidy program that distorts the price of high fructose corn syrup from his own corn crop. At one point in the 2010 campaign he tweeted that he'd stopped in a rural, eastern Colorado town to buy a soda. No doubt a Big Gulp, something to compliment his assault rifle in his trunk. As the clerk handed took his soda and mentioned the tax, he told her he 'didn't vote for that'. The clerk was probably working two, minimum-wage jobs with no health care. In a senate district where the childhood poverty rate is twice the state average…and his burning issue of the day was the soda tax.
All that said, I agree this is a pre-emptive move by CCA and the politicians they own to keep themselves viable – at the expense of nearly everyone else in the equation. And shame on Brophy for his acquiesence. But, it's no surpirse at all.
What a shameful system we've built around the for-profit prison industry, both in Colorado and the nation.
Imagine your day as a ( insert most any job title). You get up, put on your uniform and protective gear, and go to work in a stressful,tense environment. Your clients and or coworkers have been at 1 time incarcerated people, some of whom will be verbally abusive, many of whom are despairing, potentially violent, or dangerous. Your job is to protect yourself and get the job done, help them to rehabilitate themselves, and to keep the public safe from your clients. Sound challenging? How about a 33% pay cut becasue, the borders are open and or government has been meddling in your profession, to sweeten the deal?
Albert,
Just curious – why are you bringing border security into this? No one's suggesting a cut in pay for border workers – the Republican plan calls for a 60% apprehension rate of immigrants crossing the border. My guess is that they don't plan to accomplish that by cutting border guard pay by 1/3. If you know differently, share your source.
And now the Chieftain is getting into the act with a spin that those dang guards are just paid too much.
Great diary, mamajama55 – explains all of the things Jason's diary didn't when I read it. But it raises a lot of concerning questions about CCA and their handling of our state's prisoners.
Why is it, exactly, that private prison guards are paid 33% less than their public employee counterparts?
Are we paying 33% less per equivalent prisoner in private prisons? Doubtful.
Are we paying private prisons only to house less dangerous prisoners? Maybe.
How is it that private prisons house 23% of the prison population but only employ 16% of the prison guards? Are private prisons grossly understaffed, or is there some other reason?
How much of the difference in salary and employment levels is going directly to CCA's coffers, their executive salaries, and their shareholders?
this
I don't know the answer to those questions, Duke and PR. I got the 16% figure from the IMSE article on empty private prisons: 4 private prisons in Colorado vs. 24 total prisons is 16%. The 23% of prisoners in private facilities I got from the Common Cause Report. It includes people in halfway houses and minimum security facilities.
I'm guessing that the difference in 16% vs. 23% reflects different facilities studied, different inmate populations, and probably different methodologies in the two reports. I'll get back to you on that if you want to know more.
What I know is: CCA is extremely profitable, even though most of its prison facilities in Colorado are empty or half full. Some of their private facilities detain immigrants (the ICE facility in Aurora), or juveniles. This leaves conservative lawmakers with a stake in proclaiming that more detention of immigrants is necessary, and that young people are out of control and must be dealt with harshly. They need bodies to fill those beds!
Why are correctional personnel paid less in private, for profit prisons? Because a) employees have no union to negotiate for them, and b) CCA is not, out of the goodness of its heart, going to pay more than they absolutely have to to maximize profits and keep the shareholders happy. That's capitalism for you.
I don't know the rate that Colorado pays to house prisoners in state vs. private facilities. Imse says that the contract was to pay CCA $20K per prisoner housed. Senator Hudak, who just took a recent tour of Colorado facilities, said that the rate was $30,000 average per prisoner per year. The difference may be because of maximum vs. minimum security, or it may be the union pay differential, or both.
And how much money from CCA and ALEC are going into the pockets of certain Colorado legislators?
That's a whole nother post, which I should probably write. But tell me one or two that you're curious about, and I'll post the info.
oops…