Michigan Votes Forum

Introduced in the House on February 24, 2009, the House version of the Fiscal Year 2009-2010 Department of Corrections budget. This would appropriate $1.958 billion in gross spending, compared to $2.040 billion, which was the FY 2008-2009 amount enrolled in 2008. Of this, $1.898 billion will come from the general fund (funded by actual state tax revenues), compared to the FY 2008-2009 amount of $1.978 billion

The vote was 63 in favor, 47 opposed and 0 not voting

(House Roll Call 152 at House Journal 0)

Click here to view bill details.

 

Senator Cropsey, under his constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the adoption of the amendments offered by Senator Prusi to House Bill No. 4437 and moved that the statements he made during the discussion of the amendments be printed as his reasons for voting “no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Cropsey’s first statement is as follows:

I do have a question for the maker of the amendment. My first question is how much is this going to increase this budget by? I want to know how much this budget is going to increase by this amendment.

Secondly, I think it is important to note that we are not the body that sets the parole. We have a state law that had a parole board set-up, and the governor by executive order did away with the parole board and then established a new parole board and increased it from 10 to 15.

The new parole board answers directly to the Governor. I haven’t heard anybody say yet that the Governor’s action is unconstitutional. I think it is wrong, but it is not unconstitutional. She has the power to do so. She is taking direct responsibility for releasing thousands of prisoners out into our communities. That is the governor totally and not the Legislature. She has grabbed that; she is doing that.

The question becomes, with this Governor putting approximately 4,000 felons back into our communities and likely another 3,000 before October 1, what are we going to do about it? We cannot go back and undo the parole issue because that is the Governor’s prerogative. If she is paroling the people in the camps, then there is no more need for the camps. I understand where the Minority Leader is coming from, but if there is no people to put in the camps because the Governor has put them out into the community, why would we try to keep the camps open?

I would hope that I would find out how much this amendment is going to cost. If there is nobody going into the camps because the Governor is putting them into the community, then how on earth can we keep those camps open? I would suggest that we turn down this amendment.

Senator Cropsey’s second statement is as follows:

Even if we appropriate money as we did for this current year, the Governor does not have to keep the camps open. That is part of the executive branch function. Even if the previous amendment had been adopted, the Governor can still close those camps as she has done. This is the Governor’s doing; this is not the Legislatures doing. It is the Governor, and she takes full, complete, and total responsibility for doing so. It is not the Legislature.

 

Senators Brater and Cassis, under her constitutional right of protest (Art. 4, Sec. 18), protested against the passage of Senate Bill No. 4437.

Senator Brater moved that the statement she made during the discussion of the bill be printed as her reasons for voting “no.”

The motion prevailed.

Senator Brater’s statement is as follows:

First of all, I would like to acknowledge the work of the Senator from the 33rd District, the Majority Floor Leader, and the way he conducts the Corrections Subcommittee meetings and process. It has been a very positive experience working with him. I appreciate all the hard work that he puts into this budget.

I do want to take issue, however, with the final product that we have out of our subcommittee. I am not able to support it today. I think that Governor Granholm is embarking on a very important initiative to try to reduce our prison populations. I do not think it serves us well to engage in fear mongering about releasing prisoners because the majority of the prisoners in our prison system—almost 50,000 prisoners in our prison system, and that number is going down, but it is still in the high 40,000—are not there for life. They are coming back to our communities, so it is very important that we implement programs that are going to make re-entry successful. The Governor’s program calls for reinvesting the money that we were spending in locking people up and spending it instead on the re-entry program—the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Initiative. That is a new program, and it is having some success. It will take some time before we can measure the outcomes, but it seems to have a lot of important programs in place.

The idea of taking another 10 percent out of the administration of this department, however, is not going to be productive. Just because the population is going down does not mean the responsibilities of this department are less. I am one who has for many years argued that we need to reduce our spending in Corrections, but I think that the direction the Governor is heading will result in great savings as the years go on. What we need to do as a Legislature to really help these numbers go down is look at some of the policies that are keeping this prison population up, regardless of what the Governor does in terms of parole. That would be looking at our sentencing guidelines and the fact that we have longer sentences in this state compared to neighboring states without a commensurately lower crime rate. We tend to keep people longer in our prisons past their earliest release date compared to other states. We have programs such as the juvenile serving life without parole, which is not legal in many other states to send people before they are age 18 to prison for the rest of their lives with no possibility of parole, when often they committed a crime with an older co-defendant who got a lesser sentence.

So there is legislation that I have proposed that we could enact that would help reduce the prison population and save money, but we have not taken up that legislation. There are a number of things that we need to continue to do to get these numbers down. I am also concerned about the lack of funding for the additional parole board members that the Governor has asked for. I think we should have done that in this budget, but I do appreciate the work of the subcommittee chair.

Senator Cassis’ statement is as follows:

I rise to explain my “no” vote on the Department of Corrections budget. Of course, our first concern, our highest priority, is the safety of our citizens, and this year, in addition to the 12,000 inmates who are being returned to society that is customary, another additional 6,000 are being returned. That may be a problem. Hopefully, it won’t. Interestingly enough, the top two highest budgets in terms of the General Fund are, first and foremost, the Department of Community Health, and secondly, the Department of Corrections. I point this out with good reason.

As difficult as these cuts have been, the Department of Community Health managed to reduce spending overall by 24 percent, while Corrections managed only to limp in with a total cut over last year’s spending of 3 percent. That is why I voted “no.” I respect fully the work of the chair of this committee as well as the committee that drafted House Bill No. 4437. However, in my humble opinion, I think we need to go further, and the time is now, especially in terms of reforms and restructuring in order to get more in line with other states that have lower expenditures than Michigan.

I have a number of concerns and I’d like to mention them, especially about the credibility of this department and the information they provide. I have concern about the fact that this department overspent $19 million without repercussion or reprisal. I have concern about how well the Department of Corrections will be implementing consultant recommendations to reduce costs. I have concern about prisoners and their amenities, including cable TV. Yes, some may say that’s a minor thing, but, by gosh, it’s prison after all. I have concern about approval of greater recovery of costs through privatization.

While I know some of my colleagues will disagree, my only recourse was to vote “no” and make suggestions to the chair of the committee, as well as to continue to press for more reforms and more restructuring as we go forward in this state in which there is such a looming, continuing revenue demise.

 

Senator Cropsey’s third statement is as follows:

I will support this amendment. I wish the Governor would have taken into account this issue when she closed the Baldwin facility in one of the poorest counties in the state. The Governor closed that facility despite the fact that the owner of that facility was able to finally get federal prisoners there. It was due to their own initiative and not anything on the part of the state. Really, the Governor put that community into a tailspin at that time.

I’m just kind of curious to know when you talk about different regions in the state, are we talking about Democrat regions or Republican regions? At this point, most of the prison closures, about 80 percent of the jobs as best as we can figure, have come out of Republican districts. I think perhaps this is long overdue for the Governor to explain why so many of the job losses in the Department of Corrections have come out of this area. What is she doing to make sure she is not politicizing this? When we take a look at it, it certainly looks like that’s what the governor has done.

Senator Cropsey’s fourth statement is as follows:

The Governor eliminated the parole board and established a new, larger parole board that answers directly to her. When she did that, she took total and complete responsibility for the activity of her parole board and the release of thousands of convicted felons into our communities. That is a decision of the Governor and solely her decision. This budget is in response to her action for us to create some type of safety apparatus in our local communities in light of the Governor’s actions.

Two weeks ago, two disturbing revelations about the Michigan Department of Corrections spending caught my attention. First, while I know the executive orders reduced the department’s spending, the Michigan Department of Corrections has almost 6,000 fewer prisoners than budgeted for last October 1. And, yet, the State Budget Office informed the Legislature that the department is likely to overspend its budget this year. That is unconscionable.

Secondly, the recent budget transfer requests for the Department that I asked the Senate to hold up were eye-popping. Despite $19 million in unanticipated charges from the former health care provider, the Michigan Department of Corrections had the funds to cover the shortfall. It tells me that the department is squirreling away pots of money that it then uses to give up in the next budget cycle. I think that ought to stop.

The Senate Fiscal Agency and the Council of State Governments found that the Michigan Department of Corrections per prisoner cost is one of the highest in the country. No more nonsense about net savings of $120 million when no such savings are actually occurring. No more decisions by this administration to close eight facilities with not one single penny in savings in the bottom line. The Governor and the department disrupt entire communities and families without event the bad excuse of saving money.

What this budget does is give the Department 97 cents instead of $1 to spend on incarceration operations. The budget clearly identifies Lansing central office costs and submits those costs to the same average 10 percent cut that every other department, including the Legislature, is taking.

The department complains the about Secretary of State not giving ID cards to parolees but then does not work with prisoners to get the needed documents while they have the time in prison to do so. Worse, in at least 18 facilities, the department is using MPRI funding to pay vendors to get the documents for prisoners. So the taxpayers end up paying for prisoners who fail to follow one of the most basic evidence-based practices, which is to be identifiable for a job interview. The department then actually had the gall to include in the budget a provision exempting them from the out-of-state travel prohibition so that they could assist other states in implementing the Michigan Prisoner Reentry Program.

Relative to the Michigan corrections officers and the UAW members who work for the department, they have some of the most dangerous and thankless jobs in this state. In this budget, I am trying to protect the custody staff and the field agents because of the important work that they do in ensuring public safety.

The budget in front of us attempts to implement the Council of State Government’s recommendations by fully funding the County Jail Reimbursement Program, increased funding for the crime labs that are under enormous stress, fully funding the community corrections act, funding high-risk probation pilot projects, and funding the swift and sure violator sanctions that have proven to be successful in other states. I urge your adoption of this budget.

Senator Cropsey’s fifth statement is as follows:

Just briefly, in response to a couple of items of the previous speaker. First, I would like to say thank you to her for the work she has done in so many areas, especially the area of mental health issues with prisoners. She brought that to our attention several years ago. It has taken a while, but a lot of the work that she has done on that has been outstanding. We have attempted to deal with that type of thing in legislation in the past and in the budget. I just wanted to say thank you to her for that.

A couple of items that I would disagree with her on, No. 1, the Council of State Governments, when they did their analysis of our guidelines versus other states on judges’ sentencing, our sentencing was not out of line at all with other states. Another issue that she had brought up was the juveniles who are in prison of life without parole. There are relatively few of these who are there, but that does not mean that the Governor cannot take a look at those on a case-by-case basis and issue a pardon or commutation in any of those cases. That is a constitutional function that the Governor has that she can exercise at any time.