Idaho prison chief: More cuts will slam prisons

BOISE (AP) - Idaho's prisons director told legislators Friday that more budget cuts will jeopardize safety in the state's 13 lockups.

Department of Correction chief Brent Reinke told the Legislature's budget committee that prisons are already severely understaffed.

He said the department will maintain furloughs and cuts from the last fiscal year, but paring even deeper would put the prisons at risk.

"We want you to understand we're going to carry your wishes out to the best of our ability," he told the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, which is looking to trim $59 million from the state's budget. "But we are on the edge. We simply cannot continue to do more with less."

Idaho spends an average of $57 per inmate per day, far less than many other states.

But the state's financial oversight office reported in January that the system's efficiency could put its safety and security at risk.

Employees at the agency have already taken about 80,000 unpaid furlough hours, and 44 positions have been cut in fiscal year 2010. Correctional officers, who each oversee about 50 inmates, are already each taking 28 furlough hours off this year. Reinke told The Associated Press after the session that he is concerned about violence inside prison walls.

"It's an action-packed environment," he said. "It's a concentration of what's happening on the streets. That's why we have to have certain posts filled."

A legislative forecasting committee has recommended cutting an extra $59 million from Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's fiscal year 2011 budget starting in July. The budget committee must now look for savings from the Department of Correction and other state agencies. The governor has recommended the Department of Correction receive $178 million.

Reinke's budget for 2010 was cut by $27 million, or 14 percent, to $169 million, from his original 2009 spending plan.

As an example of the impact of a further budget cut, Reinke said losing even $5 million from the $178 million would mean releasing 250 inmates from Idaho prisons. Since the department doesn't have the authority to do that, the Legislature would have to initiate that process.

Budget-fueled decisions have caused some problems in the past.

In a cost-cutting move in January 2009, for instance, the department brought back prisoners who had been shipped to private prisons in Texas and Oklahoma due to overcrowding in Idaho. The return was enabled, in part, by the addition of nearly 1,400 prison beds in recent years and efforts to cut inmate growth.

But inmates who were already at the Idaho State Correctional Institution near Boise were displaced to new, temporary quarters in a converted warehouse that didn't suit their fancy. They wreaked havoc, breaking furniture, shattering windows and starting a small fire.

"We walk a fine line between efficient and ineffective government," Reinke said.