Unplanned costs exceed California prison budgets despite cuts – CalMatters

from Kayla MichalovichCalMatters

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Some of the red ink in California’s budget deficit comes from unplanned expenses in state prisonsaccording to a new report from the Office of the Legislative Analyst.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is on track to exceed its budget by an estimated $850 million over three years despite recent cuts that include closing four prisons and some labor concessions that reduced wage costs. The state budget includes $17.5 billion for prisons this year.

The office attributes the corrections department’s deficit to both existing and ongoing imbalances in its budget. The analyst’s annual fiscal outlook predicts a deficit of nearly $18 billion for the coming year spending cuts in the current budget.

The Department of Corrections last year ran out of money to pay its bills. In May, it received a one-time allocation of $357 million from the general fund to cover needs, including workers’ compensation, inmate meals and overtime.

Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said in a June 17 letter to the Treasury Department that he was “shocked and disappointed that (the corrections department) has overspent its budget by such a significant amount” while the state faces a $12 billion general fund shortfall that has led to cuts to key health and social services programs.

“These were dollars that could have been used to provide essential services to some of our most underserved communities,” Wiener wrote. “While this year’s budget included measures requiring departments to ‘tighten their belts’ and cut state operating costs by up to 7.95 percent, (the Department of Corrections) did the opposite and overspent by nearly three percent.”

Without new special funding to bring actual spending into line with the budget, Wiener warned, the deficits “will likely continue” and put additional pressure on the general fund in the years to come.

That’s despite Gov. Gavin Newsom’s attempts to save state money by closing prisons. Newsom in May decided to close Norco State Prison in Riverside County the following year closing a fifth prison under his mandate.

The Newsom administration estimates it saves about $150 million a year for each prison closure, which lawmakers and advocates see as the only way to significantly reduce corrections costs. A spokesman for Newsom’s finance department declined to comment on the analyst’s forecast. Newsom will release his next budget proposal in January.

“We are allowing wasteful prison spending to continue while Californians are told to tighten their belts and prepare for deep federal cuts to essential programs,” Brian Kaneda, deputy director of the statewide coalition Californians United for a Responsible Budget, said in a statement to CalMatters. “We’re spending millions on prisons that could be safely closed. That’s government waste, not public safety.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.